


Stealing Secrets

by itsalostgirlthing



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Depression, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Mental Health Issues, Self-Harm, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2017-11-30
Packaged: 2018-07-26 19:07:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 93,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7586368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsalostgirlthing/pseuds/itsalostgirlthing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma Swan joins a MHA (Mental Health Awareness) club on her campus and meets all sorts of people struggling with their own illnesses and inner demons–like Elsa, who battles with her anxiety disorder, and Mary Margaret, who continues to triumph over her own illness. Once she befriends a certain boy with secrets of his own and a knack for seeing things others don’t, she begins to come to terms with needing help herself and realizing that sharing secrets isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A College/Mental Illness AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Didn't See a Thing

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Note: Some triggers present—Self-harm or self-injury and depressed thoughts, but I'm doing my damnedest to stay clear of unnecessary details and focus only on the emotions Emma's living with instead. See the post on my blog for crisis resources and a note on Emma's problems and maybe some brief notes on my own experiences. Copy and paste without the parentheses and spaces: itsalostgirlthing .tumblr .com(/)post(/)147759710584(/)crisis-resources

It was hot outside. Pushing 90 degrees in the city was what Emma imagined Hell to feel like when you begin to descend. But here she was, sitting with some classmates who had stayed after their lab to share answers and trying desperately not to break out of the little bit of shade she managed to find under the sparse tree above. Of course, sitting outside on the lawn next to the art building was all good and fun for anyone wearing airy skirts and shorts, but she wasn't because she couldn't. And now, every fiber of blue denim pressed any escaping warmth right back into her skin and  _god_  she just wanted to finish up this lab report so she could go home and peel them off.

Still, tomorrow would be the same and the day after that as long as this heat wave stayed around to torture her. And like today, she would have to answer the same questions with the same single answer.

"Emma! What are you doing? We've got a heatwave," and, "Why are you dressing for the fog?" or, "Girl, don't you own a pair of shorts? It's hot as balls."

To which she'd reply, "It doesn't bother me."

But it did. Everything about it bothered her just like everything else seemed to bother her now. Because if she were to say, "Fuck it," and wear anything shorter, anything that exposed her, they'd all see it.

All the red scratches that felt just as angry as they looked.

They'd see how the fresh ones overlapped the old and wonder if they stung more than the others. (They did.) How some of them cut deeper, the only proof of how bad things could  _really_  get. Sometimes she felt her skin screaming while she walked, the material rubbing and sliding against her sensitive lines, reminding her of the dark little secret she refused to voice out.

Other times, she intentionally pressed her hand and dug her fingers into the side of her clothes in class or at work when she was feeling particularly miserable and all of a sudden, that new kind of pain would blossom in its place; one that drowned out the other. One evil for another.

And she was disgusted by it, especially on days like this. How sick it was—how sick  _she_  was. Maybe it was the sun today, baking her minute by minute, because it seemed like the heat was just stirring up all the relentless little demons inside her. All of them asking questions she could never really answer. Like, how did she become this way? Why wouldn't this thing festering in her chest disappear for good? Why did it keep coming back? Was it normal to feel this horrible? Was she being weak? Would she always be this screwed-up? Loads of people had it worse than her, why couldn't she just handle it like everyone else? Turn a bad thing into something good and pro-active like they did in the movies, on TV, in trash self-help books. Was she broken, the faulty cog in the manufacturing line?

Why couldn't she just not feel at all? Just turn it off like a switch.

Despite being the only person in her group to hate the sunny day today, she ended up being the last to leave. Which was good because it was getting harder to breathe, the prickling in her eyes made her panic grow, and worse, she could feel it in her hands; both beginning to tremor as she closed up her binder and slung her backpack over her shoulder. She took in a deep breath and tried to still herself while the anxiety of those questions demanded her undivided attention. She started thinking about what she had on her—her keys, maybe a pen cap if she looked through her bag long enough. She could manage to do some damage with either of the edges if she could only make it to the women's bathroom fast enough. She'd try. It was the only thing she managed to do right these days.

Her lungs started to burn, but there were too many sounds swarming around her. The surrounding people in the square suddenly felt like sharks, predators sensing the fresh wound on her leg she'd made yesterday after she'd gotten into a fender bender—her fault on a technicality.

And she thought of this, the bullshit processes she'd have to deal with on top of everything else. She thought of the people around her right then, that irrational fear that they somehow all  _knew_ , and how far she was from her room and the potential disasters of trying to get there. All the crap in her life—past and present—started to crash down at once. She could never understand how a simple thought, one bad little thought, could start a landslide of misery and anger at everything and herself; one that triggered a lament for the uneventful life she never had. A life where nothing bad ever happened to her, where she could just focus on getting back on track with the things she needed to do like everyone else.

And god, she could hear them now in vivid detail, the distant laughing of the other foster kids as one held her down and the other kicked her all because she was smaller and wouldn't give up her dessert that night. She could smell the stench of alcohol and stale tobacco on the carpet because hiding under her bed and pretending she was alone was better than crying in front of the other kids. She could feel the eyes on her, kids at school  _every_  year eyeing her strange fitting clothes or the little piece of duct tape on the left shoe of her favorite pair of blue Converse, a present from a foster mother she missed and a reminder of the husband that never thought she was worth 'all the trouble.' As a teenager, running away, getting into trouble, long nights trying to figure out math problems in a house of constant parties and inconsideration.

In this moment, packing up her stuff in the quad, her head clouding with evil visions and filling with vicious voices that mimicked everything she wished she could forget, there were no good times. She couldn't think of a single moment of happiness because it was all being vacuumed up while darkness pooled in from everywhere else.

She was drowning in it all. She needed privacy. She needed to leave, to run. She needed to breathe—literally, she needed to let herself—

"Excuse me?" The voice jolted the breath right out of her. Her music had been on too low which was her mistake. If it wasn't, she could've kept walking and pretending like she hadn't heard a thing instead of having to navigate through an unscripted conversation with a stranger while she still felt so raw and vulnerable.

It was some guy around her age, standing apart from a booth. She froze, her 'fight or flight' instincts going absolutely haywire. Because the normal half of her—the one that told her to be like she used to be, to just casually say, "Yeah? Hey, what's up?" and stop being whatever person she had become in the last year—was telling her to stay. That normal side said to calm the fuck down and that the guy in front of her was definitely cute and probably just wanted to say something about environmentalism or the upcoming election. The normal side of her said to appreciate his smile and just  _listen_ , or at least watch him speak because, again, he had very pretty eyes and hair that did its own thing and did it very well.

But the other part, the paranoid side that told her to resist all closeness and intimacy, noticed something flash across his features; some kind of fleeting expression she couldn't describe other than when you see something that you weren't meant to, and now you're pretending you never saw it. Did she have something on her face? She studied him as he was probably studying her and suddenly she felt irritated.

He smiled a nice friendly smile though, getting back into character for whatever charity or cause he was petitioning for, and she removed her headphones despite herself.

"Hi, I'm Ki—"

"Hey, I'm sorry, but I have a shift starting soon and I gotta go," she lied, still a little out of breath and rushed. He could probably tell. It wasn't her best effort.

"Have a flyer then?"

The bright neatness of the flyer and its perfectly square shape; the sun beaming down on her and the cool breeze that soothed it away; his dark hair and light eyes; the sound of an accent above the chatter around her; and even the damn birds chirping in an effortless chorus… She'd normally appreciate them if they weren't swirling all together and making her light-headed.

She took the little white square he offered, with its professional typing and picture of the school's seal on the top. It was school-sponsored.

"The march is still a bit away," he said and before she had a chance to read what the hell he was selling, he began to retreat. "But, we have meetings every week, sometimes twice. We need all the support we can get and if it's any more incentive to come, you get school credit for helping out, alright?"

"Sure," she managed. Eyes flitting from him to the paper and back again.

"Hopefully you'll stop by so I can catch your name," and he smiled so genuinely that for an instance she was absolutely drawn to whatever light he had. But then he was gone, back to the booth to gather more flyers.

She read the front. It was for a student-organized march to raise awareness of…

Mental Health Month.

"Of course it is," she mumbled to herself and was dead set on throwing it in the recycling so it wouldn't end up crumpled up and stuffed under the seat of her car, but by the time she made it to the parking lot and the bright blue bin was in sight… She held onto it.

She kept it and she told herself it wasn't personal. That it was just about the school credit to bump up her dismal GPA right now. That it was about the cute boy who looked at her like maybe she had spinach in her teeth. (Which she checked. All clear and she wasn't sure what he had been staring at.) That she was bored on Thursday nights anyway. That it was a good cause. That they had refreshments and, best of all, "pastries galore," as it read.

Everything she could possibly think of except for that maybe she thought it would be good for  _her_  because she wasn't ready to think that yet.

And why would she be? For what everyone else knew, she was kind, quick-witted, resilient Emma. Strong, focused, determined Emma. Smart, hard-working, smiling Emma. But she knew what she was.

She was lost, pretending like she had direction, and Emma didn't know how to fix it.

* * *

 

In the week and a half following her first encounter with the boy whose name started with a 'K,' she had accumulated enough of those flyers from her car window every day to wonder if maybe that little square of paper was the map for her to follow. She believed in signs sometimes; albeit, usually the bad ones.

Two weeks from when 'K' first handed her the flyer, the sweet but reserved Elsa from her elective art course, a girl she loved making small talk with and laughing over their art blunders, entered the conference room in the Psychological Counseling department in the Administration building… with Emma in tow.

"Thanks again for coming with me, Emma. I know it was last minute."

"No worries, I've been getting tons of flyers. Good cause, right?"

"Definitely! You guys won't regret it at all," Elsa's sister, Anna, chimed. "We're pretty much just making buttons today and hanging out, but it'll be fun. I promise."

Anna was so up-beat in comparison to Elsa, and Emma suspected Anna's dedicated involvement might have something to do with the anxiety and panic attacks Elsa's briefly mentioned of her high school years. Emma wondered if she still got them now, too, and whether she would think that talking about her own anxiety would offend the girl. It's not like she's had a full scale attack. Just normal stress that she couldn't deal with because, who knows? Like she's written in her tear-stained journal many times before, maybe she's just broken, but at least she was amazing at hiding it. Even Elsa just thought her bad spells and quietness in class were due to school overload or coffee withdrawals, and that girl was perceptive as hell.

"Killian!" Anna called out. It was the boy.

"Hello, love. I see you've brought more recruits," he said, eyes lingering on Emma in surprise like he'd never expected to see her again. He didn't look disappointed, but still—

 _'Love.'_ It rang in her head.  _'So, this must be Anna's boyfriend.'_

"This is my sister, Elsa and her friend, Emma," Anna said quickly and,  _hell_. She was waiting for Elsa to protest or counter with, "We're classmates." Her spike of dread stopped when her eyes darted over to Elsa who only smiled unaffectedly at all of them then excused herself to do what she did best—study the art hanging on the walls, the previous winners of the Disability Resources Center's student contests. (Art majors.) And, honestly, Emma was shocked. Did that mean Elsa actually considered her a friend—not just some classmate she was randomly assigned to sit next to and obligated to chat with? The normal side wanted to high-five someone; the messed up side said she wasn't allowed to have any friends.

But she let her better half rejoice and felt a corner of her lips twitch up for a second in a smile before catching Killian's quick glance from her to Elsa, as if he were hyperaware of what had just happened for her.

"Well, I'm going to go help Kristoff with the button maker before he smashes his finger," Anna said and ran over to Kristoff who, on cue, let out a frustrated cry from across the room.

"Kristoff. What kind of name is that?"

"The kind that could only belong to someone like him," Killian replied good-naturedly. "He's unique, for sure. And don't mind his humor. He thinks he's funny because Anna always laughs."

His frankness made her smile. Anna was a lucky girl.

"So." She cleared her throat. "What first?"

"A donut run for me," he said, "but these little ribbons need hot-gluing if you'd like to try?"

He showed her how to do it. He sat across from her and patiently helped her twist them around, all the while down-playing his pain from her hot-gluing his finger to the ribbon to a mere wince.

"I thought they only did these ribbons for Breast Cancer Awareness. You know, the pink ones?"

"They have one for about everything now. Sometimes multiple causes, but I don't think that was intentional."

"So, green for mental illness?"

"Well, there's a few other green ribbons, but I suppose you can call this a true-green. A bit darker than your eyes are." And he said it without ever tearing his own from their task. She furrowed her brows—was that considered flirting?  _'Girlfriend, Emma. Remember, he's got a girlfriend,'_  she thought and convinced herself he had made nothing but an observation.

It was quiet for a beat. Awkward even. Or, maybe she was just making it, so to fill in the silence, she asked, "Anything for non-illness related causes?"

"Loads," he began. "Yellow is for military troops. Brown for anti-smoking." He took over a ribbon she was struggling with and continued, "Even peace—white. Red is HIV/AIDS, but also substance abuse…" He paused for a moment. "There's one for domestic violence, too. Navy's child abuse." His lips pressed into a tight line after that. To anyone else, it'd look like he was just concentrated and maybe he was, but not on the ribbon. However, she wasn't just anyone. She was an orphan who'd grown up hyper vigilant to shifts in mood. A lot of the other foster kids were like that. A survival instinct.

"Anything for being repeatedly burned by someone incompetent with a glue-gun?" she threw out in practiced humor. They'd all learned growing up, the kids in homes like her, how to diffuse tense situations.

And it worked.

The distant storm in his eyes and expression began to clear and she saw that charismatic brilliance shining through again. She felt relieved and not just from making the mood light again, but because she made  _his_ mood light again. She helped out. She actually accomplished something positive.

"Not that I know of," he laughed, "but I'm sure we'll all band together and come up with something." She liked this easy conversation with him.

"Killian! Donuts. Now," Kristoff said sternly, but she knew it was all for show.

"I agree. I came for the donuts," she said with a smirk.

"Well, hopefully you stay for the company," and he looked her in the eyes so sincerely, it triggered something dark and troubling inside her. Maybe he saw it because he quickly added, "Like I said, Kristoff is an acquired taste, but once you get to know him, you can't help but love the bastard. And you know Anna, of course. Little ray of sunshine, she is. Not a bad way to spend part of the week, in my opinion."

When he left, taking orders from everyone with particular cravings for jelly, custard, sprinkles—only rainbow was acceptable for Anna's—on the way out, she bit her lip. And then pressed down harder. And harder. A guy like Killian, a friend like Elsa, even a friend like Anna, they didn't want someone like her lurking around. Someone covered in scratches and scars, full of secrets and despair that no one should share in; who thought of her own misery at least 50% of the day. All the self-pity that happened under her covers at three in the morning. The real her that wasn't worth a damn now that she could barely do the things she once easily did before.

A poster on the wall right in front of her caught her attention.

**TIPS FOR PRACTICING MINDFULNESS:**

  1. **Focus on the task at hand and only on that task to prevent…**



She folded and glued each ribbon with precise movements. She'd never seen her fingers work so deftly and by the time every ribbon was glued, she did feel better about her current situation. At least, better than it could fall, as she knew from experience.

When Killian returned, a special donut with her in mind, too, all the ribbons were beautifully done with care and dropped in the basket on the table. Glue-gun wrapped up neatly and no trace that Emma Swan had ever been there. Just as she liked it.

"Where'd Emma go?" he asked, not bothering much to hide his disappointment from Anna.

"She left a little before Elsa. I think she was tired from all the ribbons, she got kind of quiet. I didn't get a chance to say bye, but I think she'll be back with Elsa next week, so yaaay! More people," she chatted contentedly while trying not to drop sprinkles everywhere.

"Huh." He looked at the last two donuts in the box, one for him and one for Emma. "She'll regret having left this behind. Make sure to tell her she missed out on an 'old-fashioned.' It might persuade her to stay longer next time."

"Oh, I'll take that." Anna snatched it from the box. "Thanks, Killian!"

"Hey! I wasn't offering, love. I made the run, after all."

"Snooze, you lose, buddy!" She ran to Kristoff, "I stole us another donut," she beamed.

"God, you're the best girlfriend ever," he sighed happily into his pastry.

They were a cute couple and complemented each other well, but Killian's mind wasn't on Kristoff and his girlfriend, Anna. It wasn't on Elsa or the ribbons, flyers, or donuts. It was on Emma who still remained a mystery despite all the little pieces he'd caught today. He  _liked_  her, but he wasn't sure she was interested in him. Something about the way she looked at Elsa after Anna introduced her as a 'friend' made him think that getting to know  _anyone_  wasn't really an interest.

Or, maybe it was in some way he couldn't understand yet. Something in her seemed lonely and it was like no one bothered to pry.

Later that night, when she was tossing and turning for the worst part of four hours, she got up and slumped to the floor, crawling underneath her bed and tried to wipe her face and dry her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt. She was alone in so many ways and she knew better than to try to surround herself with people because no matter what, she'd always be on the outside. Worst of all, she was the one that had to make sure it stayed that way.

She didn't go with Elsa the next week.

 


	2. I'm Not Sick, But I'm Not Well

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi lovelies, thanks for coming back to read this update. I really look forward to writing this story and any input, comments, or personal stories are welcome for the process! Remember, if anything is too triggering, take care of yourself first. Know your boundaries and see the Crisis Resources I've collected on my blog: www .itsalostgirlthing .tumblr .com(/)post(/)147759710584(/)crisis-resources (without the spaces and parentheses).
> 
> BTW, Not in this particular chapter, but soon, we'll get some info on Killian's own secrets, too. Okay, let's start the show!

Emma tried to distance herself as much as she could from the world outside. Her skin was sensitive to the touch, littered with puffed up lines and scratches with some scabbing at parts where little pinpricks of red had peeked through. The stinging from them alone was enough to stop her from doing anymore. She'd gotten what she intended anyway—a rawness all over, outside; one that matched how she felt inside.

Even the smallest 'Hello' or question about her day—including an impersonal, "What did you put for question four?"—was too much for her to stomach. The social contact just made the scars inside her hurt more; the wounds she carried with her from home to home, the ones she hadn't inflicted herself.

She wasn't resting when she should; missing classes when her body finally gave out and getting upset from the irregularity and chaos of her sleeping patterns and how they were jeopardizing the already shaky system she had in place at this institution. After a week of fighting it—of sporadic attendance in class, missed shifts at work, and avoiding classmates—she shelled out half-assed papers and turned them in, some two weeks in advance; the ones she knew she wouldn't be able to beg extensions on. Next was sending e-mails to her professors and a text to her boss feigning a contagious virus.

The business of completing her assignments was depressing in itself, but the quality of her bulletproof lie and alibi was, as usual, impressive. No one would suspect workaholic Emma to ever play hooky to goof off. Her teachers this semester didn't care much about attendance; except for her painting class with Elsa.

It was all handled, and at last, she allowed herself a guiltless weekend and week of sleeping the days away. She retreated to a safe, blank space in her mind while her body rested in the dark, timeless zone of her room—a continuous stream of white noise and "The Sound of Rainfall" playlists repeating uninterrupted in the background. Something about the noise was enough to keep her in a steady self-induced coma.

And she slept. She cried. She prodded at her scratches. Arose for whatever food she had stored in her room, and went back to the darkness and let herself melt into it.

She indulged in her misery for days and then, without compassion or sympathy for the young girl, without reason or anything of her doing, it simply vanished on its own.

* * *

 

The day she finally decided to venture out of her little corner of the world, Emma sat up gently in bed, her hair mussed in waves and mind in a daze. But, her self-inflicted cuts were healed enough to not hurt on contact anymore and the thought of doing some work, real well-done work, didn't send her mind into a flurry of panic either. Her ability to concentrate was back; she could probably actually read something and process it fully like she hadn't been able to in her slow decline over the last month.

She cleaned up plastic wrappers and packages, straightened out her sheets and blankets, fluffed her flattened pillows, and tossed articles of clothing into her laundry basket, not bothering to check if they'd even been worn because just having her floor clear felt nice. Collapsing back on her neatly made bed felt great. Her greasy hair and faint smell of stale deodorant did not. So, she changed from her shorts to pants, grabbed her things, fresh clothes and shower bag, and padded down the hall to the bathroom in her yellow flipflops with ducklings on them.

It was a surreal feeling to be out of her room, close to midnight, in the abandoned ghost town of her dorm. Tonight was the most draining night of the week; two days before the freedom of Friday swooped in and rejuvenated everyone on campus for the weekend until those Monday blues rolled back around. She appreciated her body stirring back to life on a Wednesday. It meant she had some room to ease back into her life and as she shampooed her hair and scrubbed at her arms, stomach, and carefully brushed over the scabs on her legs, she sighed in absolute and utter relief.

She always forgot how much better she felt after standing in the warm spray of water and how clean and soft her skin felt when she toweled off and pulled on new clothes. By this point, balancing one foot at a time on the wet tile as she pulled on her leggings wasn't difficult at all. It wasn't like she could walk out in a towel that stopped mid-thigh in front of the other girls in the bathroom. (She needed to invest in a robe.) But there were a lot of people who were shy about their nakedness, so no one gave her any trouble about it—except the occasional impatient girl in line for one of the shower stalls. But, eh, you couldn't please everyone.

She emerged from that shower stall relaxed and refreshed; squeaky clean, a little flushed, and feeling better than she had in weeks.

* * *

 

Depression, if she was willing to call it that, was a fickle force. Depression liked to stop in and be an asshole for no reason—basically tripping her every time she tried to do something, whispering criticisms and unhelpful solutions in her ear so lowly no one else but her could hear them, then shouting at the top of its lungs all around her while she sat in class, tried to give exact change, or walked around campus. She hated that feeling the most; feeling the shrill assault to her ears and having it infiltrate her mind, making it impossible to focus, to hear other people and herself. The words all translated to garbled garbage. But this could happen to other non-depressed people, too. Caffeine crashes and sleep deprivation stole focus and concentration away, right? That's why it was so easy for her to get away with hiding the truth. Depression though… That monster liked to keep her focus hostage for days at a time, sometimes weeks—she shuddered at the thought, god forbid, probably months if it'd fancied it.

But the next day, depression was not lurking in the shadows or around corners. On Thursday, she felt all her gears functioning. She could remember lyrics again and sing perfectly in tune without much effort. Her fingers didn't shake when she held her ruler down and traced a line onto a graph for one of her assignments. She wrote down hesitant ideas and words in her mandatory art journal, a required section of 'inspiration' for future projects to fill her quota. And, because they were actually  _there_  in her mind, in a connected web of firing synapses and creativity, they came rather easily. She was crawling back out of the cave she'd hid in for the week and it didn't feel like a big deal. She was working again. She was functioning like a normal person. Like there wasn't a recall on broken models like her that had been sent out of the factory by mistake.

This all meant she could finally return Elsa's text. She was so lucky in finding the girl's number the week before while digging around in her art journal because she needed the handouts for this month's project and Elsa could be the one to save her. With that exchange, however, a two-way communication was established and now Elsa had Emma's number, too. It was exciting to communicate again, but the commitment still scared her. She didn't have the best track record with consistency lately and people and 'friends' took constancy.

"I hope you're feeling better. Anna caught a cold too, but she's still going to the meeting tonight. Want to come? I'll meet you with peppermint tea :-)" Elsa had sent.

Emma sat on the edge of her bed and looked out her window, finally opened up to show the sky turning darker, and she thought,  _'Why not? Maybe I can glue more ribbons… Be 'mindful' or whatever the hell that means.'_ From what she remembered on the poster, it basically told her not to spaz out and just work on whatever she had in her hands. It had help that night though, didn't it?

* * *

 

"I smell mint," Killian said, pulling out his laptop and setting it at the end of the long conference table where Kristoff, Anna, and Elsa sat. He tried to swoop in and steal it, a mischievous smile on his face.

"Back off the tea, Killian. It's for Emma," Elsa said, moving it out of his reach and safely onto her side of the table. She did not see the optimistic look in Killian's eyes. Anna did.

"Oh, yay! I'm so happy she's feeling better. Just in time to help us pick movies for film night," said Anna.

"Aw, that means I can't have her donut," grumbled Kristoff, but turned to Killian and playfully commented, "since  _someone_  keeps bringing them in hopes that she turns up."

Killian raised an eyebrow and kept his face blank. "Wouldn't want her to be left out."

" _Sure_ , that's why." A sly smile crept onto Anna's face.

"Okay, children, that's enough." He rolled his eyes dramatically.

"I'm not the one that looked like a sad puppy during last week's meetings," she giggled.

"I did not look like a sad puppy—"

"Who's a sad puppy?" a voice rang from behind them. Emma dropped her backpack to the ground next to Elsa and pulled out a seat.

Killian watched her, noting the youthfulness in her face and how much lighter she carried herself. Still, her movements were careful like she was testing the waters, not pushing or committing herself to anything too involved or exciting.

She looked like someone who was happy to be back from whatever tiring place she'd been.

"Emma!" Anna exclaimed, glancing at Killian with one last teasing smile, but changed the subject. "We're brainstorming movies we can play on Movies for Mental Health night."

"Oh… Um. Yeah, I don't think I'll be much help. I don't know any."

"One will probably pop up when we go through the list. So, ideas anyone?"

The room was all gathered around the table, some people standing in the back next to their pot luck of food and drinks, but still shouting out names of movies she'd either never heard of or never gotten the chance to watch.

"Hold on, hold on!" Anna shouted, furiously scribbling misspelled titles on the white board in the front. "Just remember, guys. We gotta narrow it down to only two."

There was an audible groan from the back. Elsa was just messing with her sister which earned the laughter of the room.

"Hey, that's two hour and a half movies, everyone. Not all of us can marathon for hours on end—and I'm talking about you, sister. Don't think I haven't noticed how many episodes of  _Parks and Recreation_  you've watched this week on our Netflix. It's impressive, but I don't know how you've had time for homework."

"Easy. I'm not doing it," Elsa whispered to Emma who tried to stifle her escaping laugh.

She was having fun. She was having  _fun_. And she really liked hanging out with Elsa like she was one of those girls in her lab group, all going to get coffee together or hang out at the drop-off on the east side of campus where the ocean lapped again the rocks below. She was having so much fun, she didn't notice Killian move to stand near them.

"Any others?"

" _Requiem for a Dream_!" Kristoff shouted.

"Um… That's a little dark, babe. Let's try to keep it positive—hopeful! But informational, too. And realistic. Oh, but also…" Anna rambled a little more, but Emma stopped paying attention.

 _'_   _Babe.'_

"Elsa," Emma whispered, unintentionally catching Killian's attention, too.

"Hm?"

"Are Anna and Kristoff dating? I thought she and Killian…?" she trailed off while Killian processed it. Who said they'd been bloody dating?

"Oh, no. Anna and Kristoff have been together for almost two years already," Elsa said. "That's why he listens to my warnings to quiet down and can it. He's like a little brother now."

Emma smiled back and turned to face Anna and the riot forming around the white board again, but she was only thinking about how she'd totally miscalculated that. So, maybe Killian  _was_  flirting. Did it matter though?

She couldn't help it. She really did try to fight it. The paranoid version of her told her to stop, not to do it, to push it out of her mind, told her that she was damaged goods, etc.. But she didn't listen. Didn't even listen to that harsh and critical 'normal' side of her either. She just shut them out and let herself be.

Then she did it. She smiled. A secret smile that anyone would think was because an all good and fun war was breaking out in front of them.

But, again, Killian managed to catch it all; looking in just the right spot at the right moment. He'd caught another secret meant only for Emma to know and the fact that it was about him, well, it made him smile, too.

* * *

 

Half an hour passed and he was tired of standing; plus, with the prospect of sitting next to Emma, he couldn’t help but pirate away someone's seat when they left for the bathroom and pull it up next to her. If she noticed, she didn't show it. (She noticed.)

"So, it's settled. The first movie will be—drum roll, please." Kristoff obliged, a thrum of hands slapping the tabletop echoed in the room. "Ashley's pick,  _Silver Linings Playbook_. And seriously, guys, we  _have_  to test out the projector early because we don't want a repeat of last year."

"Yeah, I'll say, Anna," someone called out, earning a few more giggles at her expense.

"Hey, I didn't see anyone else stepping up to stall!" she shot back.

Emma turned to Killian.  _'She did notice me,'_  he thought cheerily.

"What happened last year?" she asked.

"We couldn't get the bloody thing to turn on for almost thirty minutes, so Anna forced everyone in the audience into a dismal game of charades," he said, liking how Emma giggled back.

"Lastly—" Anna cleared her throat, demanding back authority to the unruly crowd just having too much fun. "—the second movie voted for movie night will be Killian's choice,  _It's Kind of a Funny Story_."

"'It's Kind of a Funny Story…?'" Emma repeated. "I mean, is that appropriate for the night?"

He smiled, chuckling a little at the cuteness of her face twisted in confusion. "Completely," he said. "I'd tell you more, but you'll just have to come watch."

"You're hoping I'll be enticed enough to show up, but not enough to just look it up on my phone right now?" She added, "Ever hear of IMDB? Besides. I don't like watching stuff without spoilers. Spoilers make it better."

"Well, I'm hoping that you'll trust me when I say you're going to like it." He held her gaze for a moment longer. "What do you say? Don't spoil it and come?"

At this point, both voices that normally tried to dictate how she should be and how she should feel, think, and act were both gone. The night had been too energetic for that slow poison normally plaguing her to take hold. Especially when he was looking at her like that—like there was nothing he was looking forward to more than sitting with her and watching a movie. And it wouldn't technically be a date; just a friend and another friend going to a club event. It was safe enough.

The longer she was around Killian though, the more she didn't care about what 'safe' was.

"I'll think about it," she finally answered coyly, mirroring the grin blossoming on his face.

"I'll take that as a 'yes,'" he said smugly.

"I didn't say  _yes_ , I said maybe."

"No, no. But now that your attendance is out of the way, you should bring snacks so I can steal them. I like popcorn. Extra buttery."

"I'm sure I'm not the only one who'll bring snacks to a movie," she snorted. "Steal theirs."

"But they won't be  _your_  snacks."

"Fine then. Challenge accepted. Just a warning though, I'm pretty possessive about my food and you'll be lucky to steal a kernel. And, don't think I'm taking my eyes off you for a minute, buddy."

"Oh, I'd despair if you did, Emma," he replied without missing a beat.

And, lord, the look on his face was  _definitely_ not 'safe.' She couldn't even think of something to throw back at him. She was too focused on the way he said it and how it made her heart do little fluttery things; things that would be alarming if it weren’t for the comfortable way he lounged next to her, in dark-washed jeans and a navy button-up paired with a Han Solo swagger that came with a half unbuttoned vest.

Or, bright blue eyes that shone like light on water behind dark stray strands of hair that her fingers itched to sweep off to the side.  _Fuck_ , she was in trouble, and right now she didn't care. Right now, she couldn't feel anything from the healing scabs on her skin or any lingering hint of panic and anguish from just a few days before. Only the beating of her heart, the intensity of  _them_ , and the subconscious nearness of their bodies. Physical chemistry was a sneaky bitch. And Emma loved her.

He looked down, smiling to himself, and right when he lifted his head to ask her something, Kristoff, the lovable oaf, came barging over. He was going on about watching some game on Killian's TV because he'd had an accident with his, involving a roommate 'who never picked up his damn socks' for the record, a Star Wars marathon, and reenactment with hockey sticks.

When they began to clear out, Kristoff and Killian planning to go one way and Anna, Elsa, and Emma the other, Killian didn't ask if she was going to come to next week's meeting—he asked her if she  _would please_.

"I may be persuaded with another donut."

"As the lady wishes," he said with a spreading grin and bid her goodnight before walking off with Kristoff.

Anna wanted to tease Emma a little, poke a button or two, but from what she was learning about the mysterious girl, it probably would hurt more than help it. So, she bit her tongue, smiled to herself, and started chattering away with Elsa as they walked back to their buildings.

"I'll see you in class tomorrow, then?" Elsa asked her.

"Yeah. I think I probably will. Art sounds nice right now. See ya in the morning," she said to the two and started toward her dorms, walking with a little bounce in her step as she breathed in the cold night air.

Not a bad way to spend part of the week, indeed, she recalled from the first time Killian had bid her to come.

* * *

 

So, it was officially five days of being able to breathe without hurting, think without becoming scared, and feel without being overwhelmed. She'd survived until another meeting with everyone, and of course, Killian, but she would always watch herself, waiting in case  _it_  returned. It wasn't that she was miraculously healed or recovered, whatever they called it, but she simply just didn't have any triggers around her, nothing trying to push her over the edge. Life had given her a week just to live.

She still thought about it though. Eyeing her collection of pins and other instruments of her destruction that she'd pulled out of her drawer, she still felt an attachment to them. She thought darkly,  _'I might need them again.'_ So, she dumped them back in the drawer and lay down on her comforter, a troubled expression clouding her eyes.

Why did she even get the way she did?

What was wrong with her? Where did everything go wrong? And with those thoughts, she traced her memories back to the beginning, moving from one time in her life to the next and all the shock, hurt, fear, and loneliness unique to each situation, home, or fight came pouring in with it. Her eyes started to burn and soon, staring straight up at the ceiling, she was crying. Tears fell from the corner of her eyes, wetting her ears and running along her hairline, but she didn't care to wipe them away. Only more would come because she wasn't just crying for the young woman she was now, she was crying for the little girl she'd once been, the awkward thirteen year old, the teenage girl struggling to do well in high school so she could one day escape.

She was crying for all the times she'd been alone and started to whimper when she imagined herself, a little blonde thing with wet eyes and her face buried into her arms under her covers because no one wanted her, no one cared if she was okay or loved. When she grew older, she figured no one would care if she existed or not, either.

Soon, Emma wasn't lying down looking up at the ceiling. She was curled into a ball with wet eyes… and face buried into her arms just like the little girl so that no one in the crowded group and foster homes of her past could hear her and no one in her dorms would hear her sobs now.

This crying spell was different. It wasn't like she was being stabbed all over with the sharp looks and words of past figures. Her lungs hurt, but she could still breathe. This time, it was slow. Steady. It drew out each nightmare and bad memory from her heart with a purpose other than trying to destroy her. She was mourning herself.

And then, she sat up and ran her hands over her cheeks and eyes, her sleeve under her runny nose and opened the drawer. She pulled up the hem of her shorts—the ones she only wore in her room where no one could see. She looked at all the darkening scabs, healing over slowly… And decided to add one more.

She dragged slowly and deliberately, so different from the angry and chaotic slashes surrounding it. And she cried a little more as she did it, but she kept her hand steady and clenched. And then it was done.

She looked at it with red, tired eyes and sniffled. It wasn't deep or furious like the others. Just a simple straight line, only meant to hurt.

She sighed and tossed the pin in the drawer. She tried to stop. She did.

Curling up under her cool covers and glancing up one last time at the moonlight filtering through the blinds, she closed her eyes and let herself succumb into exhaustion and slept soundly.

She awoke the next morning just before dawn when the sky was beginning to transition from the black night to indigo to the nameless in-between pallor from the new day's presence beyond the horizon. She didn't move her body even a fraction, keeping her numb, outstretched hand as still as possible. The sensation of pins and needles danced across her fingertips as she waited in the darkness for the miserable thoughts she knew so well to come back. Based on last night, they should be back.

But they weren't.

When she finally shifted onto her back, watching the pale glow on her ceiling brighten, she realized the ache in her chest wasn't there and that the dread of life was still absent from her mind. She bent her knee and brought her thigh up, running a thumb over the newly puffed skin of that single fresh line. She was so confused, but as the day crept its way into her room, she smiled—one that was so many things—happy, sad, confused, and even a little dark.

She didn't know what happened last night, not with the crying or even cutting, but she was okay right then and there and she wouldn't question the blessing anymore.

She swiped away the alarm sounding off on her phone and stretched. Time to go to class and later on, another meeting and time spent swapping little remarks and jokes with a boy and his cheeky smile who always sat near her like he never wanted to miss a moment they could simply share together instead.

 


	3. Are You What I Think You Are?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember, if anything is too triggering, take care of yourself first. Know your boundaries and see the Crisis Resources I've collected on my blog: www .itsalostgirlthing .tumblr .com(/)post(/)147759710584(/)crisis-resources (without the spaces and parentheses).

5:30AM: she stared at nothing in particular, listening to a morning playlist she’d unexpectedly been motivated and focused enough to make. The quiet sound of plucked strings and gentle crooning fed her imagination. Everything from practical matters about school and work to little fantasies in which she so far away from here doing magnificent things all skimmed her mind. But no subject was more interesting than that of her new friend, Killian Jones.

What did she know about Killian Jones? She knew she liked being around him; knew that when he looked at her, that once lost, remarkable, and magnetic part of her that she’d forgotten she had somehow resurfaced. It was infectious, this openness she felt around him. She began hanging out with Elsa outside of class now, and with that came random surprise greetings from Anna who this entire time had a similar schedule to her own. As a walking buddy, Anna was a bit…  _bright_  sometimes, but Emma welcomed the company anyway. Even Kristoff whom Killian had totally predicted would grow on her was proving himself to be a down to earth guy who said what was on his mind; plus, a shared enthusiasm for sweets and pastries? That made for a decent guy in her book and so were others from the club who all made an effort to shout out her name from across the hallways.

She sighed at the tranquility of dawn and soaked in the walls around her painted in soft blue light while birds sang as they sailed passed her window. As of late, waking up wasn’t scary. The idea of another twenty-four hours didn’t fill her with dread or paranoia that something wrong was heading her way with a sadistic vengeance. No, lately she felt like a whole person, or close enough to it. She was stable and solid, not so frail and thin—a victim to the wind knocking her off her feet and blowing her life into chaos.

She’d been turning in her assignments on time and getting back decent marks, and she was optimistic that she could turn it around this semester and make it work. She didn’t feel like such a failure, especially when she had Killian always vying for her partnership in little projects and tasks.

Like today, with a ridiculous load of flyers for movie night.

“And one here…”

“Killian, don’t you think that’s a little overkill? You just put one on that wall.”

“Darling, you clearly know nothing about distracted college students,” he said. “We’re not just getting information out there. We’re trying to plant that information into everyone’s caffeine and technology crazed minds.” He nodded back to the last flyer. “There’s a reason why we’re doing one color and posting so much of it.”

“Because it’s obnoxious?”

“ _Because_  they’ll see these every day. On their way to the cafeteria, the lounges, the bookstore, the bathrooms, their dorms, until finally—Boom. Magic. They’ll automatically know that the bright green flyer on the wall is about  _Movies for Mental Health_  without even having to glance at the thing in detail.”

“Jeez. Alright. Anything else you over-analyzed, Mr. Psych-major?”

“Well, green has been noted to inspire feelings of relaxation and rejuvenation.”

“…Did you pick the color, too, Killian?”

“Why, yes I did, love.”

She rolled her eyes, but still had to admire his passion and attention to detail. “I’ll stop now before you start rambling about font appeal or logo placement,” she laughed.

“Oh, sweetheart—you  _did_  notice,” he smirked, taking the new flyer she held out to him.

“God, you’re too much.”

“And you know you love it, Swan. Now come on, time’s a-wasting.”

* * *

 

What felt like five-hundred pounds later, they’d managed to canvas their half of the campus in green and set off to relieve themselves of the rest up and down Main Street just ten minutes away.  

They discovered that there was no better combination of people to take on the challenge than the two of them.

Emma and Killian seemed to charm every store owner, yoga instructor, and cranky barista into showcasing their flyers in the windows. Even the people who were at first hesitant and uncomfortable with the subject of mental health quickly found themselves becoming enthusiastic about the cause. Some became proud to be a part of it, displaying the information on their entrance way cork boards and pillars.

Emma understood though, it was a strange topic to approach so light-heartedly—“Here, we’re watching movies about these serious conditions that people suffer from every day!” But what this was really about was getting the awareness out there, to break people out of their shells so they would not be afraid to approach the subject and learn more about this under-reported and under-taught part of so many people’s lives.

Everyone could relate to depression or anxiety in some way, Killian would say so eloquently about the subject. He read people fantastically and knew just the right places to go into detail, to peak their curiosity, and when to plainly inform. Emma, still reluctant herself about openly identifying with any illnesses or conditions, interjected with what she knew best—appealing to the hesitant, the wary, and those unfamiliar with any of this stuff. And, hard as it was to believe, they were down to their last remaining flyer which they handed to the manager of a little trendy wine bar on the opposite side of the street from where they’d started.

“And that, Swan, is all of them. I think we make a good team.”

“Yeah, I’ll say. How many did we even start out with?”

“Enough to make my shoulder ache.”

“I know that this is all good and admirable that we’re doing this, but I’m absolutely exhausted.”

“Let’s have a drink then? This place seems interesting, you have to admit,” he said, gesturing to the backlit wall of melded wine bottle bases.

It was nice, she admitted to herself. It was all light, polished wood; mason jar vases and artsy exposed piping; painted brick walls; high metal stools that looked almost too well-loved and aged to be there. The only thing missing, she thought, was a—‘ _Oh, nevermind, they’ve got one.’_  The high wall in the back of the room was decorated in rows and rows of hanging ivy, succulents, and a few flowers that popped out in all the greenery.

“Uh…” she began. This place was trendy as hell. It made her feel like a kid with a fake ID. Plus, there didn’t seem to be a beer bottle in sight.

“Not a drinker?” he asked, fully prepared to suggest somewhere else just for the chance to spend more time together.

“I like wine sometimes, but I’m more of a beer girl. Honestly, I don’t know a thing about wine.”

“Well, that makes two of us. Care to watch me fake it?” He pulled out a stool for her.

“I suppose I wouldn’t mind watching a train wreck,” she said with a laugh and hopped up to the small side table.

They made a quick toast to their accomplishment and the drinking commenced. Soon did the questions.

Killian learned that Emma was a reluctant business major, but figured she didn’t care enough to change it now.

Emma learned that Killian had never hated a class more than Statistics, but it was an essential requirement so he gritted his teeth and dragged himself to it every other day.

Killian learned that Emma preferred dawn to dusk which is why her favorite color was blue. (She omitted that she liked his eyes for the very same reason.)

Emma learned that Killian greatly missed living on a western shore for orange and purple skies at sunset, his preferred time of day.

Killian learned that Emma hoarded packets of Mexican hot chocolate mix in her room in case she wanted a cup (or five) in the middle of the night.

Emma learned that Killian did, in fact, drink tea, but he never bothered with cream or sugar.

Killian learned that Emma was the same with her usual coffees.

And so their game went on. ‘An answer for an answer,’ they called it, and Killian relished every bit Emma chose to be open about with him. Food. Movies. Music. Habits. What they did to decompress in their free time when they actually had some time to spare:

He played a little bit of guitar and wouldn’t stop a movie or put a book down until he’d seen the whole thing through.

She liked making origami swans out of gum wrappers and paper place mats in diners, and read about five books at one time because she ‘had the self-control of a five year old.’ (She didn’t tell him that she hadn’t picked up a book in almost a year because she didn’t have the motivation to read them anymore.)

Eventually, their evening slowed, and they couldn’t remember who initiated it, with the social cues getting lost in the seas of wine they poured into their glasses, but the questions became more intense. Personal, darker, closely held secrets.

“Tell me about your beginnings,” he said on his turn. She picked up her wine glass and took a long swig.

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“I think there’s plenty to tell.”

“There really isn’t. What about you? You can start with the accent because, I don’t know if you know this, but you’re not fooling any of us locals.”

“Ha-ha. And don’t think you’re sneaky, Emma Swan. I may have had more wine than in my entire life tonight—which isn’t saying much because us lowly beer drinkers—” he stopped when she erupted in a fit of giggles, everything suddenly ten times funnier, then continued, “—us lowly beer drinkers have never been properly educated, but I’m still determined to hear everything about you.”

“Fine,” she reluctantly conceded. “But you go first. The accent.”

“I moved across the pond when I was fourteen. Went to live with my aunt and uncle when my brother went off to join the Navy.”

“So, it was just you and your brother back home?” she asked.

“In a manner of speaking.”

“That sounds like a story in there.”

“Hm, nice try, love, but I’m not that easy. Remember, ‘answer for an answer.’”

She tore her eyes from him and stared into the depths of her wine glass as she swished its contents around. “Okay. Short version: I’m an orphan. Wasn’t adopted. Never knew my parents, but apparently they were in a hurry because some people by a diner found me on the side of the road.” She could feel him staring at her and immediately felt stupid for sharing her sob story.  _‘Nice move, Emma,’_  she thought.

“Em—”

“Look,” she interrupted. “I’m sorry for my mood killer ‘beginnings.’ I probably could’ve omitted the diner part, in hindsight…”

“And you were sent to live in home after home from then on, I’m guessing,” he said softly. She looked up and was met with only empathy—not  _sympathy_ , but empathy. Like he knew what it was like to grow up in her duct-taped shoes, too.

“Yeah… Some better than others.” She lifted the rim to her lips and downed the last of her glass before pouring herself a new one.

“Liam and I were taken into the system for a time.”

“Your brother?”

“Yes. My father… Let’s just say the bastard wasn’t a happy drunk, and one night, my mother screamed just a bit too loud. It didn’t help that the car was parked half on the lawn, so the neighbors called the authorities.”

“Why didn’t you stay with your mom?”

“She was deemed ‘unfit’ when they realized she was out of sorts with an empty prescription bottle that had someone else’s name on it.”

“Killian,” she sighed, shaking her head like his bad memories were trying to ensnare her, too. That’s why he had paused and gotten so serious talking about the color of the domestic violence ribbon at her first meeting.

“Hey, at least I had my big brother with me and a decent home after we got out of those awful group homes. You, though, you had to survive it alone, Emma, and you’re incredibly strong for it.”

“This is really heavy,” she laughed bitterly.

“Yes, it is,” he said with a half-hearted smile and held his wine glass out to her. They clinked their glasses together for surviving round one of their darker game and he asked, “‘Answer for an answer?’”

“Go ahead. Shoot. I suppose everything’s on the table now, right?” she smiled awkwardly.

“How many times have you moved?”

“I lost count around nine. I got into some trouble for a while.”

“Cheers to that.”

“Okay, your turn. Where’d you get that?”

“What?” he asked. His head tilted to the side in confusion as he wondered what it was she was staring at. She set her glass down and moved her hand to his right cheek and barely traced the long scar, only now visible in the dim lighting of the room.

“This.”

“Ah. Well…” his voice trailed off as he watched her hand fall away. He cleared his throat. “Like I said, my father wasn’t a happy drunk. He especially didn’t like it when I’d stick up for my mum.” Before she could ask more, he picked up her hand and gently turned it over to expose the blue buttercup tattooed on her wrist.

“What’s the story behind this little piece of art?” He’d noticed it before, but this was the first opportunity he’d gotten to actually examine its detail. “It’s pretty on you.”

“Oh, you know. You turn eighteen and the first thing that pops into your mind is, ‘I want to get inked.’” She smiled at the memory. “I had an old friend, Lily, and if it wasn’t for her, I’d have a flaming eight ball right there.”

“Oh, no,” he laughed.

“I was eighteen! I didn’t know any better. It looked  _hardcore_ ,” she said with a chuckle. “I make sure to always express my gratitude whenever I talk to her.” He smiled, imagining an eighteen year old Emma, surely stubborn then, too, arguing about getting the tattoo.

“So,” he finally said.

“So.”

“I do believe it’s your turn, love.”

“Are you parents still back ‘across the pond,’ as you so British _-ly_  put it,” she asked.

“My mother’s gone. She died when I was fourteen and Liam seventeen. Right before I moved here.”

“Can I… I mean, if it’s too personal—” she was interrupted.

“Emma, what about this conversation  _isn’t_  personal?” he mused. His expression softened as he met her eyes again. “You can ask me anything. I’m surprisingly comfortable baring my soul to you right now.”

“How did she…?”  _‘Die,’_  she finished in her head.

“Overdose.”

She wasn’t expecting that. Dying was dying, but still. She wished it weren’t so tragic. It couldn’t have been easy for him.

“She saw this,” he pointed to the scar on his cheek, “despite me trying to avoid her, but she was too quick for me when I was leaving for school. Always incredibly smart, that woman, and probably knew something was wrong from the moment I came down the stairs. But, I remember her turning white as a sheet. And, it’s not like he didn’t rough us all up now and then, but I think it was the first time he’d left a permanent mark on  _me_  that she just couldn’t handle it anymore.”

Fuck, it wasn’t just accidental overdose. Killian’s mother killed herself.

“She wasn’t there when I came back from school.”

“Fuck, Killian. I’m so sorry I asked,” and began to mentally berate herself for her curiosity.

“Swan, it’s okay. I mean, it still hurts, but it’s a different kind than when it happened.”

“I don’t understand.” She’d thought of all the horror she’d seen herself and how it was all still vivid as daylight when it chased her down even now, years later.

“With all the therapy my poor aunt and uncle put me through when I was an angst-ridden teenage boy, I’ve been listened to so much that, I don’t know… I guess I just don’t make it a secret anymore, so it doesn’t have that kind of hold on me.”

“You moved on from it, you mean.”

“I don’t think we really move on from the serious things. They helped make us who we are, whether we like it or not. I just think I learned how to deal with it better. It looks like I’ve moved on because I’m not letting it stop me anymore. But it’s still there—it’ll always be there. I just can’t let it take over me again.”

“The psych-major psychoanalyzing himself. Is that like meta-therapy?”

“Best place to practice,” Killian smirked.

“I know it’s your turn, but I want to know what happened to your brother. Is he okay? I mean, is he…?”  _‘Please, don’t say “died in the line of duty,”’_  she begged internally.

“He’s alive and well. So is our father, though I imagine it’s only a matter of time before he drinks himself to death. Can’t believe he’s evaded it so long already. Liam though, he’s the bloody golden child of the two of us. High ranks. Great reputation. The oldest and the strongest,” he said with a slight bitterness on his tongue that wasn’t from the wine.

“No, I think you’re pretty strong, too.”

“I think I’ll have to be with the way you’re carrying on right now—you plan on sharing that bottle or is your intention to guarantee that I’ll have to carry you back home?”

“Oh, shut up. I can hold my liquor, Jones.”

“I’ll believe it when I see you up on two feet.”

She ignored him and tilted her head in thought—and dizziness—before blurting out, “I used to wish I had siblings, but then I had to keep sharing with the other little monsters in my group homes and changed my mind.”

“It definitely has its downsides. My brother and I have had a rocky relationship in the past. I think he blamed me about mum for a while, but we were young.”

“You are so honest. I mean, here you are sharing all these things with me when I haven’t even told you about me growing up in detail.”

“Like I said, I have no qualms about sharing my secrets with you. Plus, I can be a very patient person when I want to be.”

“Why though? Why tell me? It’s not like I have any family for you to relate to. I don’t have aunts or uncles, a brother—”

“Because I know you’ll understand, Swan. Why and how. When to pity and when not to.”

“I do hate being pitied.”

“It’s a terrible feeling. Makes me feel weak.”

“Same here.”

“But, it’s important to be able to tell the difference between people pitying you and people feeling for you. You know?”

Did she know? She hadn’t given much thought to it, really. When would she have had the opportunity to practice it, though? It’s not like anyone knew who she really was and what she went through—what she had to do to  _herself_  just to get through the weeks.

She looked down at her cloth covered legs and her hand that rested there. She could imagine what the skin under them looked like right now; what her legs would look like with her pajama shorts on. Scarred up like her—like Killian.

She had a thought, in her drunken daze, that maybe she hurt herself on the outside just as much as she felt attacked inside. But there wasn’t anyone attacking her anymore. No one was attacking Killian, either. Still, she didn’t know how to put distance between the past and present and ‘how to deal with it better’ like he did when they started overlapping. Those days when all her old feelings of worthlessness, being a waste of space, neglected, and abused as a kid bled with the present—the twenty-one year old young woman she was now. And that’s when she bled, by her own hand; when a new wound would appear in the collection on her marred legs.

“Yeah, I guess,” is all she replied.

Although a little far gone himself, Killian was still sensitive as ever to her and the demons seeping out of her more conspicuously than usual even as she tried to drown them with more wine.

She took another swig.

They still wouldn’t die.

* * *

 

True to her word, Emma could hold her liquor, but not her laughter. They left the heaviness of their pasts behind them at the bar and stumbled along the path carrying with them only friendship and validation.

Killian, although adept on two legs despite all their shared drinks, was a tipsy goofball that kept her giggling. He definitely didn’t share his father’s drunken temperament and Emma silently commended him for that, for rising above it, but she did wonder if it had anything to do with the fact that they were leaning onto each other for support, singing out of tune and teasing each other for it in the frigid night air. They could feel the temperature dropping by the minute even with all the booze in their systems keeping them warm. She was glad she’d left her room early enough in the morning to warrant her bringing a thick sweater with her today.

Killian still draped his jacket across her shoulders despite her protests, but soon she was clutching the soft leather to her, all the while apologizing repeatedly for leaving him to the elements in only a thin long-sleeved shirt. He insisted it was colder back where he’d grown up, that he actually liked it and would be damned if he didn’t give his jacket like a proper gentleman.

“You’re already a gentleman for walking me to my actual door. You didn’t have to come all the way up here. What if you pass out in the stairwell going back down?” she laughed as if it were the most hysterical thing in the world.

“Well, you’ll just have to come check the stairs in the morning.”

“Fat chance. I know I’m going to hate life tomorrow with all the wine tonight.”

“I wouldn’t be able to sleep not knowing if you made it okay.”

“Well, now I’m going to wonder if you got home okay.”

He was leaning against her door frame, staring back at her with that vulnerable, happy look again. “I still want to know more about you, Emma Swan, but I won’t nudge you too hard,” he said and straightened himself up. “I appreciate tonight more than you know. Confiding. Laughing. I’m truly honored to know more about you. To know you. You’re a survivor and a bloody good person.”

“Oh, no,” she started to crack up, effectively disguising her flattered smile with one of laughter. “You’re an ‘I Love You, Man’ drunk.” He joined in until the hallway suddenly shifted and everything began to grow hazy. “You are, too, though. I had fun tonight—even with the dark Q&A.”

“Goodnight, Emma.”

“Goodnight, Killian,” she replied quietly, the flush on her cheeks prominent with all her smiling. He started to back away when she stopped him, “Wait! Tell me your number—I’ll text you mine, and then you can text me back when you make it safe. I hope that made sense because it did in my head.”

“Emma, is this you trying to get my phone number? Because really, love. There’s no need to stand on ceremony.”

“Oh, shut up and tell me before you really do pass out in my building.”

When he was gone and she was stripped out of her clothes and into the soft cotton of shorts and an over-sized shirt, her phone lit up the wall above her bed. He’d made it back.

_‘Safe and sound. Goodnight Emma’_

She grinned, the kind of smile that starts from that fluttering feeling in your chest and rises in you like light until the only thing you can do is smile at the heavens. But even the stars, the moon, or blinking galaxies wouldn’t be enough to tear her eyes from her screen. The little bubble indicated he was sending something else.

It was a simple,  _‘Thank you’._

She sat on her bed, scabbed legs and all, and tried not to think of all the reasons why she and he could never be more than friends, how he could never know about her problem with hurting herself, or her skin littered with a gradient of fresh red, aging brown, and healed silvery pink lines.

She tried not to think about who she used to be, like the tattoo on her wrist. Or, who she was just yesterday, like the puffed up line on her left calf. No, she just thought of tomorrow and all the ways she could be someone new.

* * *

 

College was a place of horror for some—late nights, god awful early mornings, caffeine and energy drinks making up for those five out of eight hours of sleep you  _didn’t_  manage to get.

There were professors that nitpicked at wrong formatting on footnotes. Also, professors that just didn’t give a damn about anything, including organizing their material because apparently clarity meant nothing when you were on the other side of the desk grading tests; instead of trying to actually decipher and take them. Worst of all, you practically worked yourself to the bone off campus so that you could work yourself to the bone  _on_  campus.

For people like Emma Swan, college was definitely a never-ending uphill struggle, and with her elusive melancholy that ambushed her from time to time, it literally became a pain when she couldn’t take it anymore and opened that drawer next to her bed to choose from her collection of wicked instruments. The physical stress was simply a better alternative than focusing on the mental and emotional stress that wrought havoc on her spirit. Thinking of Killian and what he’d said, maybe she just didn’t know how to process that inside havoc as well as the outside.

On the other hand, there were people like David Nolan and Mary Margaret Blanchard. To them college was just another obstacle to be conquered. They stressed about research papers, academic journal reviews, and incomprehensible notes just like every other student, but there was nothing ‘a little hard work and determination’ couldn’t fix with them. Which is why Emma hadn’t exactly been heartbroken about her closest friend, David, taking half the semester to follow the girl of his dreams on an internship abroad—resulting in a fairy tale romance in the very ‘City of Romance,’ no less.

It had been freeing not to have to hide her misery and create cover stories for the tiredness in her eyes that David never fell for anyway. He gave her the space she needed though, but not because he was none the wiser about the silent torment his friend couldn’t even confide in him about. No, he let her be because he could see the plea in her eyes, as small as it was sometimes, for him to back off. But now he was back and standing in the doorway of her room. She stopped midway through her happy greeting and the rest dissolved into a sigh when she caught the instant frown he failed to conceal as he compared the Emma in front of him to the one he just remembered seeing him off at the airport not even four months ago.

She waited for the interrogation.  _‘How was she feeling? Was she alright? Was she getting enough sleep? Was she eating enough? Or, was she gorging on too many baked goods to be considered healthy?’_

He didn’t though. He went in for a hug and held her tight, not saying a word, and she honestly didn’t know which was worse—his silence or his over-protective fussiness.

“That bad, huh?” was all she said, and still  _nothing._  It was starting to irritate her. “My god, say something already.”

“I missed you, Em.”

“Missed you, too, loser.” It seemed to snap him out of his concern—for now. When he stepped back, he was genuinely smiling.

“So, what kind of trouble have you been getting yourself into lately?” he said with fake authority.

* * *

 

“Bloody-fucking-hell!” Killian cursed, cradling his hand.

“Oh… I—I didn’t think it would hurt that much,” Kristoff said in horror, watching the tiny pin pricks of blood seeping through the side of Killian’s hand.

“What the hell did you think would happen?! You just stabbed my hand with a bloody  _stapler_.”

“I was aiming for your arm, but you moved.”

“Oh, my mistake! Next time I’ll just stand still and let you run at me with an unhinged stapler in your hand,” he snapped.

“It was Victor’s fault,” the boy said, pointing at the bleached head of hair guiltily retreating from the room. “He dared me to try it on myself, but…”

“But it looked like it hurt, so you tried it on me?” Killian gritted through his teeth. It actually didn’t hurt too badly anymore; nothing worse than a paper cut, but the fact that this was the most stupid prank he’s ever been the victim of kept him resentful and so enraged that he hadn’t noticed Emma with David and Mary Margaret standing to the side watching the situation unfold.

Anna tried to lighten it up, nudging Kristoff to walk away. “Alright, guys, let’s not kill each other.” She grabbed the over-sized first aid kit from the wall, embarrassing Killian who all of a sudden felt like a baby crying over a scraped knee in her care. “Seriously, please, Killian. Don’t kill this idiot. I love him and he’s the only one tall enough to get me books from the top shelf.” Kristoff was ushered away, head down like a shamefaced child while Anna chastised him for being such an idiot.

“Is it fatal?” Emma chimed in. Killian’s head perked up at the sound of her voice. They’d been exchanging random texts for days. Mostly complaints about Killian’s classes like, _‘If I have to listen to my professor make one more joke about how short Madison was, I quit America,’_ and Emma wondering nonsense in the middle of a lecture,  _‘What if the chicken crossed the road just because she felt like it?’_  Killian had gotten in trouble for snorting to that one during his math class.

“Maybe you should try kissing it better just in case?” he said with a raise of his eyebrow and just like that, the anger flooded from him and nothing but her shy smile and glance back at the blonde boy now narrowing his eyes at Killian concerned him.

“Yeah, um. Killian, this is David and Mary Margaret. I thought they could hang out with us today.”

“As Anna always sings, the more the merrier. It’s nice to meet you both. You’ll have to excuse my dramatics. Of late, Kristoff and Victor have been hellbent on seeing how far they can push me.”

“Looks like the stapler was the last straw,” Emma said.

“Considering that they’re both still intact, most likely those morons won’t stop just yet.”

“So, Killian,” Mary Margaret said. “It seems you’re all pretty busy. What’s the prepping for?”

“We’ve been interning for the last few months,” David finally spoke. “Haven’t really been in the loop,” he said stiffly, glancing at Emma with accusing eyes. She avoided his eye contact like a teenager waiting while her dad asked about her date’s ‘intentions.’

“Everything these two set their minds to turns to gold, so wherever you want them…” Emma said. David was still eyeing Killian and her. She took a step back. _‘Stop making it weird. It’s not like that,’_  she tried to telepathically communicate to him.

“Elsa’s taken on the concession stand by herself. Ruby is trying to tinker with the projector,” Killian said.

“Ruby’s here?!” Mary Margaret gasped excitedly and immediately sought out to find her friend.

“And you?” Emma asked him.

“I was going to just start folding pamphlets—”

“Why don’t I help out with that?” David jumped in with suspicious eagerness. “Emma, you mentioned you were thirsty. Think you can grab me a soda?”

“Oh. Yeah, sure.”

“Thanks, Ems.”

 _‘And leave you two alone. Great idea, David.’_   She turned to Killian, “You want anything?”

“No, thanks, love.” David jerked his head almost comically at Killian who, as Emma knew by now, had  _too_  innocent of an expression on his face. The pet name wasn’t an accident. She rolled her eyes at the both of them and left without another word.

But, David and Killian were civil, making light conversation about the event, the club, and folding the glossy paper into brochures one by one.

“So, how do you know Emma?” Killian ventured.

“We met in high school.”

“Really?” his attention now fully on David.

“She’d just transferred in and I was assigned to help show her around. She’s been like a little sister to me ever since, but she hates it when I call her little. Always argues, ‘You’re only  _five_  months older than me!’” he mimicked a spot on impression of Emma. “But, I’m also five inches taller than her, so she just has to deal with it.”

“I understand the pain. I’ve been trying to get my older brother to call me ‘younger’ instead of ‘little’ my entire life.”

“It’ll never happen,” David said, at last cracking a smile.

“Probably,” Killian chuckled.

“So, you and Emma are  _friends_?” He said ‘friends’ with a strain.

“It’s impossible not to want to be her friend, wouldn’t you say?” he replied smoothly to which David nodded his approval.  _‘There’s one point from the big brother,’_  he thought to himself. “I told her about the march coming up and she happened to show up with Anna’s sister, Elsa, the next meeting.”

“That’s great. I’m glad she’s involved with something.”

A flash of red leather came through the door and toward them. With a smoothie and soda can in hand, she slid the chair out with her foot and sat down at one side of their table. David took the can gratefully and Killian mulled over the little awe and even relief in David’s tone when he’d mentioned Emma participating in anything. Killian decided that he had been right. It was confirmed, she did like to isolate herself; especially before she’d become so close to the club. But why? She was so vibrant and likeable. He couldn’t see the full picture yet and was now curious to know what other tidbits David knew about the secret life of Emma Swan. He had a feeling that they wouldn’t be given freely by the boy though.

He’d simply still have to keep an eye out for them.

* * *

 

David eventually gravitated towards Mary Margaret who now sat in Emma’s previous position, waiting as Ruby threw question after question at her new boyfriend, but this finally left Emma and Killian to relax on their own without her big brother watching them like a hawk.

“He’s intense sometimes.”

“You don’t say?” Killian feigned surprise.

“He means well though.”

“Of course he does. He’s your family.”

“Yeah, I guess. In a way.”

“Family is who you make it, Swan. My aunt and uncle were only relatives until they took me in. They supported me while I was going through a tough time and that’s when we became family. No doubt that David’s in your corner all the way.”

“Wow. How much bonding happened while I was gone?” she laughed.

“Honestly, not a lot. I don’t think he likes me much.”

“He’s just wary of everyone I meet.”

“I’m sure my little spat with Kristoff didn’t give him a cheery impression.”

“If someone stapled me, I’d have ripped their arm off just to staple it back onto their body in return.”

“Bloody hell, and I thought  _I_  was scary.”

“Not a chance. My temper has got yours way beat. Trust me.”

“I’ll do my best not to antagonize it.”

“Smart man.”

“So, are you excited for Saturday?”

“Of course,” she smiled. “I’ve never been to anything like this at school before, let alone the drama theatre.”

“Does this mean I’ll have to share your popcorn with David and Mary Margaret?”

“Share  _my_  popcorn. Not this again,” she giggled. “No, I have a feeling by the second hour, they’ll have holed up in some dark corner of the theater for privacy.”

“Not Snow White and chivalrous Prince Charming over there,” he said with good-humored sarcasm that made her laugh.

“No, really, I swear. After a while, I just stopped video-chatting them because every time they answered, his hair was always sticking up, shirts inside out, ‘Snow White’ blushing like crazy,” she whispered to Killian. “Like, seriously. Just don’t answer and call back when you’re all done going about your business.” They laughed, stealing glances at the suddenly scandalous couple across the room.

“I’m sensing you’re hesitant about Snow White.”

“I’m liking the secret nicknames. I feel like a kid again. But, yes, I’m just… intimidated. She’s really sweet to me always and obviously a good person if David likes her, but she’s just so perfect. Like, she really is Snow White.”

“You never know, Swan. It might be compensation for something darker.”

“Always the psych-major,” she smirked, jabbing him in the ribs.

“I’m serious—stop that!” he laughed, jerking away out of her reach. “Perfectionism is like a sickness to some people.”

“You mean, chasing something impossible and trying to maintain every aspect of your and other people’s lives in order to achieve it? Are you telling me that being a control freak is bad? No way—I am so enlightened,” she giggled.

“Now you’re just trying to hurt my feelings,” he pouted and she returned it.

“Okay, alright, come here, I’m sorry,” she patted his head lightly.

Emma and Killian were so caught up in each other, and Ruby and David were so wrapped in their on-going interrogation, that no one noticed Mary Margaret perusing the wall of plastic slots behind her, each filled with bold-titled pamphlets like, “Depression: What does it look like?” or “OCD: What you need to know.” No one saw how she lingered on, “Eating Disorders: What are they?” and how it reminded her to look at her phone, pull up the calorie counter app on her main screen, and check to make sure she had inputted the calorie and nutrition count of her early dinner with David.

She submitted her meal and her day’s goal showed up green. ‘Yay! You reached your calorie intake goal for the day. Good job! Remember, progress—not perfection!’ flashed on her screen.

“Okay. I think I’m done. He’s a keeper,” Ruby came up and said cheerily.

“If he can pass the Ruby test, he sure is,” she said with a smile gracing her lips.

“Did you do your chart?” Ruby asked, peering over her phone at the green alert. Mary Margaret tapped a few buttons and showed Ruby a calendar overview, all the months neatly separated and color-coded.

“Yes, ma’am. See? All green.” The last five months all had green dots on them, and before that, only a sprinkle of gray and red.

“I’m so proud of you!” Ruby cheered and hugged her.

“And the gray’s not even that bad. It’s just days I don’t log in how much water I’m drinking.”

“I’m so glad you’re back. I’ve missed our gal-time so much, you have no idea. We have to go to this café I found. They have tons of goodies and awesome salads, too.”

Mary Margaret laughed, “I’m eating more than salads now. I mean, hello, I was in the Land of Pasta for the last three months.”

“Don’t ever mention ‘pasta,’” David groaned. “I never want to look at, taste, or smell pasta ever again.”

“You just lost fifteen points, man,” Ruby huffed.

“Ruby, play nice, I like him,” Mary Margaret said, then called over Emma and Killian. “You guys want to come with us to that this café on Main? Ruby says it’s great.”

“Sure, sounds great. Emma?” Killian asked.

Right as Emma was about to say yes, Victor and Kristoff came running through the classroom, sending Emma toppling over a rolling chair—which sent her falling against the small bookshelf and onto the floor—where a heavy encyclopedia came crashing down onto her, the corner jabbing her right in the calf.

She shrieked out in pain. Of all the goddamn places. It managed to sink down right over a new cut from yesterday.

“I swear to god, I’m going to kill you two if you don’t start acting like fucking adults!” Ruby shouted at them with blazing eyes.

“Are you hurt?” Killian asked and kneeled down.

“Fucking great,” Emma spat, eyes stuck on where the cut stung. “Son of a bitch.”

“Do you want an ice pack?” Mary Margaret asked. Killian offered his arm and Emma took it, calming down a little.

“No. Thanks. I was just surprised is all.”

“You’re bleeding, Ems,” David said, pointing at the tiny blot of red starting to peek out from under her light blue skinny jeans. “Did the book stab you that hard?”

 _‘Shit,’_ she panicked.

“Here, there are bandaids in the first aid kit, as you well know from Kristoff’s earlier recklessness,” Killian said, trying to take her attention away from the cut.

But that’s all Emma could focus on.

Because if she shimmied her pants up her leg to reveal the cut—she’d reveal  _all_  the scars, and if she didn’t do a thing, who knows how much that little devil would keep bleeding and the last thing she wanted was to sit in a café with everyone fussing over her leg.

She sighed and reached over for her bag. “No, I’m okay. I’m just going to call it a night. See you guys later.”

“Emma, it’s probably not that bad. Two bandaids tops. Come on, let’s all go out,” Ruby offered.

She wanted to go. God, she wanted to join them so bad and keep spending time with her best friend, new friends, and Killian, but there was no way out of this except to run away.

So, she said her goodbyes, an ‘I’m sorry’, and left. While everyone was out having fun and laughing with each other, Emma laid down on her bed and just cried, alone and lonely, because she felt like a freak for living a double life that no one could ever know about. She whimpered, tossed and turned, dragged the edges of her nails over her chest and arms, and just let her anger and hate consume all of her. She let her sorrow pull her under while children picked on her and nasty adults taunted her all over again. She was just about drowning in it all when—

There was a knock and a voice.

“Emma?”

It was Killian.

_‘Shit, shit, shit. What is he doing here?’_

Her phone vibrated with a message from him, but it slipped from her hand and clattered under her bed. She got onto the hardwood floor and reached, sliding it out from under the mattress.

Two messages:  _‘Are you awake?’_  followed by,  _‘I can hear you moving around. I brought you back tea and a donut.’_

She didn’t know what to do. She knew she looked like shit. Could she blame allergies? Would that be believable?

 _‘Emma?’_ he sent again.

She looked in the mirror and wiped her eyes and nose which were slightly pink, but not distressingly so. There were pink lines on her neck, nothing deep, but the trails bright and long. She opened her dresser and grabbed a turtle-necked sweater and pulled it over real quick, checking again in the mirror to make sure she was all covered up, and went to the door.

She took in a deep breath and unlocked it, opening it slowly.

“Hey there, love.”

“Hi,” she said as casually and in control as she could. It was pretty good considering she’d been sobbing for at least forty minutes. Killian was smart though and Emma should’ve known better than to answer the door. For an instant, a part of her admitted that she wanted him to see her like this. For  _anyone_  to see her as she was.

“Donut?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for supporting this story! Remember to take care of yourselves, lovelies.
> 
> Also, it's kinda my birthday... *insert gif of Rapunzel here* So a comment/kudos would be wonderful, but if not, it's totally okay, I know everyone has lives and is busy. Still, thank you for making it all the way down this long chapter and reading---Have a great day!


	4. A Million Miles to Go

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off, thank you so much for the birthday wishes and the support on this story! Hearing your responses to this story truly helped me and I apologize for any mistakes or typos. My concentration has been a little iffy the last couple of days, but I wanted to post something for you guys. (And to the person who asked me on tumblr, the titles are always just lines from the song I repeat over and over while writing the chapters.) Alright, thanks guys! Hope you enjoy :)

“Room 24”

It was the only thing Killian could recall from the night he’d walked Emma to her room after posting all those flyers and stopping for a few—or several—drinks. He remembered the scratchiness of the dark green letters etched into the door, but nothing of the light green walls he could now see perfectly inside. As for everything else, Emma’s figure blocked his view as she stood in the doorway between him and her sanctuary.

The last time he stood at her door, they were laughing—flirting even in the euphoria of their drunken night. Now, he was holding up a bagged donut as bribery for letting him into her room, but more importantly, into that mysterious head of hers for insight on what had clearly flown over everyone’s heads when she’d been hurt. By some miracle, the pastry bribe worked and she waved him in, plucking the bag out of his hand with a little smile and taking the tall to-go cup with her tea.

“Sit wherever,” she said, closing the door behind him.

He walked toward the window to the desk chair sitting underneath it and surveyed the papers and binders on her desk. Blue, white, and pale yellow handouts with course names like ‘ART 102’ and ‘BIOL 225’ in the headers were scattered across it. A few crumpled balls of paper, dark ink peeking out from the folds, surrounded an open art journal, and an unnecessarily large ceramic cup with more pens than she could possibly need sat next to a monitor. It was definitely a place of work, but the thin layer of dust on everything except the pages suggested otherwise.

And, lord, were there books—short stacks in corners, on a stool, balancing along the edge of a dresser, and some piled on the floor. There were antiqued books with worn bindings and gold-stamped titles, others glossed with stock art or matte with artsy minimalist covers. All of them, for the most part, looked interesting though and he realized she hadn’t exaggerated when she said she completely judged books by their covers and compulsively bought more than she could read.

He turned his attention back to her and to the heavy turtleneck sweater and fuzzy pajama pants with ducklings on them (part of the matching set that also came with her shower-flipflops) that she was dressed in.

“How’s the leg feeling, love?”

“It’s fine. Thanks.”

She sounded convincing. If he’d had his back turned, he would’ve assumed that she was completely unfazed by Victor and Kristoff knocking her into a bookcase that sent her and a ridiculously heavy book crashing onto her. The blankness of her face was less convincing to him though. It was too void of anything.

“Really, I’m sorry I was such a baby earlier,” she said and hopped up on the bed, pulling her legs up under her. She felt an instant spike of panic, her eyes snapping down to her legs.

“You started bleeding, Emma. You were allowed to get upset—and you barely did at that…”

She wasn’t paying attention. She was too busy secretly praising every deity she could name for possessing her to put on high-socks under her pants when she’d changed earlier. Her pants had ridden up, pulling at her knees when she sat down cross-legged, but thankfully exposed nothing but socks with a flower pattern on it. No scars. Her secret was safe again, but it also frustrated her, this conflicted feeling of wanting to be exposed and yet not wanting anyone to know what she had been doing for so long now. Because that would mean her having to stop and she wasn’t sure if she could. It also meant taking a chance that Killian ran out on her like she was a freak show maniac stockpiling sharp objects in her room.

“…and Mary Margaret gave those morons an earful. Everyone pitched in to make sure they realized how stupid they’d been and how much they owe you one.” He smiled. He meant it to be comforting.

“Great, so everyone was talking about it,” she grumbled, ripping apart her donut into pieces.

“We’re your friends. Of course we didn’t let it go,” he stressed. She dragged her eyes from her sticky fingers to the boy looking at her with an unsure smile. “You can’t escape our love, Swan. It’s like a cult. I speak from personal experience when I say that because you’re friends with Anna, she’ll never let you have a bad day in the rest of your life. Ever.”

That managed to lighten her up a bit.

“And to be honest, we all like you a lot more than Victor.”

“Poor Victor,” she sneered.

“Bloody idiot. And I’m not just talking about his decision to bleach that mess he calls hair.”

She finally laughed a bit at that and Killian congratulated himself.

“Are you feeling okay though?”

“Yeah,” she sighed. “I just got worked up for a minute.”

“I get it,” he attempted. “I hated getting smacked in the back of my head. I don’t know, it just made me instantly see red. Pain is weird like that.”

He didn’t get it. She appreciated the effort though. “Something like that,” she replied politely, but he knew better.

“Nothing like that, huh?” and gave her a sad smile. There were just some things, he realized, that he would never be able to understand without her permission.

“I’m sorry I’m not a sharer. I’ve never really been, but it’s not you,” she reassured. “If anything, I open up a lot more to you than I do with other people.” They’d reached a dead end on the subject, so he stopped pursuing the truth behind the incident earlier with Victor and Kristoff and moved on to playing around.

“What can I say,” he said with a smirk, “I’m just irresistible like that.”

“Stop before I kick you and your over-sized ego out of my room.”

“Fine, but only because it’s fascinating—Emma Swan in her natural habitat. Her habitat being mostly a book hoarder’s paradise though,” he teased. “I mean, ‘Night of the Silver Mist’? Sorry, darling, but that sounds god awful.”

“Hey, it seemed interesting at the time, and the cover’s pretty. Plus, is was only twenty-five cents at the thrift store, so I figured—”

“Why not add it to the piles of books that are going to suffocate you if there’s ever an earthquake? You have enough books in here to read out the rest of your days.”

“Maybe I’m preparing for the apocalypse. While everyone’s dying of boredom, I’ll be completely entertained,” she countered.

“Surviving on what? Your mountain of hot chocolate packets over there?” He pointed to the three boxes, not including the already opened one lying on its side, on the shelf. “You weren’t kidding, were you?”

“I never kid when it comes to food and drinks, Killian. I thought we already established this,” she giggled, tearing off a piece of donut and popping it into her mouth for show.

A hint of mischief sparkled in his eyes as he got up and began to nosily take a turn about her a room, flipping through books and scanning CD stacks. She watched him as she drank her tea, raising an eyebrow when he jabbed once more at her things. “Wow, Swan. Never heard of MP3s?” He tapped the plastic stack.

She threw a small pillow and hit him square in the head. “Yes, because CDs are  _so_  ancient,” she deadpanned.

He moved on to study the poster on her door. It was a logo, an advertisement for a fictional company from something, maybe a game he could vaguely remember playing but just couldn’t place in his mind.

“Where is this from?” he asked.

She responded smugly, “If you don’t know, then you’re not worthy.”

He shook his head at her obscure references to the things she liked. The girl really did love her secrets.

“You’ve found my movie collection,” she said while he quickly recited titles under his breath. “Only the most excellent assortment of mindless action and crude comedies.”

“Oh yes, it must’ve taken quite some time to reach this level of complexity. I mean, you have fire, a fastfood restaurant, some very revealing outfits, guns, drugs—is that a  _chicken_  on one of the covers?” But next to the chicken movie was another film that stood out among the rest in both genre and box design. It looked like it’d been carelessly tossed at the end of the neat row. “Ah-ha!” Killian exclaimed. “And you said you don’t watch ‘movies like these’.”

“What? That? It’s not like a serious movie.”

“What are you talking about? There’s are huge psychological elements to this film, it’s practically a treasure trove.”

“Killian. That’s a children’s movie, and a really weird one at that. I only have it because Ruby’s girlfriend, Dorothy, clearly likes that whole ‘dark side of childhood’ thing. She’s been making me watch all these horror-esque movies.”

“This is one of those movies with nothing else like it. I mean, who ever heard of a skeleton from the land of Halloween having an existential crisis about his own holiday?”

“Oh my god, get out of this room. I swear, you’re so full of it sometimes.”

“I could analyze the hell out of this movie and blow your mind.”

“I hear a bet in that.”

“Name your terms, Swan.”

“If I still look at it as a bizarre children’s film by the end, you have to run across campus and get me takeout because this donut will not hold me over tonight.”

“Accepted. And if I see that look—that little scrunched up one you make when you’re genuinely deep in thought, you have to watch another movie with me,” he proposed. She felt her cheeks heat up as she envisioned what her ‘thinking face’ must look like and how he’d actually taken the time to note it.

“Fine. Agreed.” She turned on the large monitor on the dresser and proceeded to hook everything up. “DVD, please.”

“Prepare,” he handed her the DVD, “to be amazed,” and plopped right down in the center of her bed. She shoved him over and they listened to the slow drag of the ominous Halloween music play.

* * *

 

Well…

She’d be a liar if she said she  _didn’t_  see the movie a little differently. A lot had gone over her head the first time she’d watched it by herself without Killian’s commentary, but did it blow her mind? Not exceptionally so.

But Killian did.

He was so great at what he did, reading into things and having the ability to express them in just the right words. He clearly saw things that weren’t always obvious. He was special. Emma found herself more interested in with Killian thought about the movie than the movie itself.

“So, you have your thinking face on right now,” he pointed out as the credits rolled on and they were again cast only in the dim light of her table lamp. “But being a gentleman, I’ll give you the opportunity to argue that I’m wrong and you weren’t amazed at all by this exclusive Killian-commentary.” She was amazed by him alright.

“That movie had more going on than I thought it did.”

“And…?”

“And it was deeper than I thought,” she said, thinking,  _‘…Sort of. It was mainly strange, but I just want to watch another movie with you.’_

“I win,” he smirked.

“You still half-lose because I need food. We’re going across campus.”

“I get to watch another movie with you. I call that a win.”

She shook her head despite the smile plastered on her face, went to the dresser, and pulled out a pair of jeans. “I’m just going to run down the hall and change out of these.” She tugged at her pajama pants.

“It’s only across campus—no one cares. Besides, fuzzy yellow ducklings look rather cute on you,  _Swan_.”

“Just pick a movie, Jones.” She kicked her sneakers out from under her bed and picked them up, calling out behind her as she left the room, “I’ll be right back!”

When the door shut, Killian folded his arms behind his head and reclined against Emma’s pillows in satisfaction. He knew she hadn’t been exactly enthralled about the movie, but somehow he’d proven himself worthy enough for her to  _pretend_  he won so that they could watch another—and that was definitely a win.

He didn’t want to waste time and sat up, all the while grinning like a fool. He moved like one as well, cursing when his foot came down on the charging cord connected to her phone perched at the edge of her nightstand. With clumsy hands, he launched forward to catch it, but luckily it snagged on the knob of her drawer, the momentum inching it out with a squeak.  

“Bloody hell,” he exhaled. A broken phone; that would’ve definitely put a damper on the evening. He untangled it all, placed the phone safely back down and reached for the knob of the drawer with full intention of just sliding it back in. The glint of silver reflecting the lamplight above caught his attention. It looked like metal— _a lot_  of metal.

Killian knew he shouldn’t. It was a violation of Emma’s heavily guarded privacy and she would very well never forgive him if she found out that he had overstepped. But he pulled it out anyway, the quiet slide of wood scraping against wood possessing him to keep on trespassing. Inside there were pins of all sizes and purposes. Some were ordinary safety pins for clothing, but a couple were thick and long, giant industrial versions he’d seen before on aprons.

‘She works in a diner,’ he reasoned, but the other occupants of the drawer were harder to rationalize. A razor blade, new and unused with cardboard still taped around it lay abandoned in the corner. And knives—long ones, stubby ones, dull ones, blades that cut just by looking at them. Some were utility, common swiss army knives, and others were ornate and beautiful. All of them were closed except for the one closest to him. It was a smaller blade, no bigger than two inches with a handle of white pearl and pieces of turquoise imbedded into it like flower petals.

Quickly, he was overcome by suspicion. How could the  _blunt_  edge of an encyclopedia manage to cut her so deeply, especially with the barrier of jeans? And one thing he knew for certain about Emma was that she was strong, but the strongest always seemed to have the worst demons of them all. He knew this well and also knew how far one could go to cope with the presence of those demons, to cope with a painful existence of uphill struggles that never seemed to let up. He knew how easily it was to fall back down and how physical pain could be used in defense—to distract for a moment or even just to leave some kind of marking that gave twisted hope, like another notch in a wall or tally mark on a calendar.

Killian understood how pain led to desperation and how it infested like a disease until everything was torture. He understood the throbbing sting of knuckles hitting bedroom walls over and over again; breaking then healing just to be broken by him again.

He knew how misery could become a permanent fixture in someone’s life,  _every damned day_  of it, and how sometimes destructive ways could take it all away and give him some sense of control, an outlet even just for a few moments.

He could suddenly visualize Emma in his place. Her standing in his room laying hit after hit on the plastered wall. He could see her sitting on his bed at his aunt and uncle’s and tipping a lighter until the metal came alive—

The hallway erupted with a short burst of laughter, so he shook off his past darkness and the shadowy version of Emma he’d imagined, focusing on the very real one that might walk through the door any second. He shut the drawer gently, careful not to disturb the instruments inside then jumped up to the wall that held her DVDs.

Just in the nick of time, he picked one up as the door swung open with her greeting him, all smiles and shining eyes.

“Sorry, my neighbor doesn’t know when to shut up some times. Ready?” she asked, tossing her pajamas onto the desk chair.

“Yeah…” He dipped his head, pretending to examine the movie in his hands and allowing himself a split-second of distress at the idea that this beautiful person in front of him, sparkling and irreplaceable, might feel as suffocated and distraught as to turn to something so unforgiving and ruthless.

He knew Emma. He knew who she was, parts of who she’d been, and the person she was meant to be with all her ideas and dreams—even though they weren’t grand and focused on simple comforts, but pure happiness all the same. She wanted a pet someday and a cozy small house. She liked sandy shores and wanted to be close to a beach or lake where she could sink her toes in while she read her dozens of books until the sun set.

And then there was this drawer. A new element that made her simple dreams of just feeling safe all the more precious. This was one secret he was afraid to see. He didn’t want her to be unhappy, to feel like a stranger uncomfortable in her own skin.

He didn’t want his friend to hurt like that.  _‘If she even is. You don’t know for sure,’_  a voice told him.

“Killian?”

“Huh?”

“I asked what you picked,” she said, walking around the room grabbing a random tote from the floor and dropping her phone, keys, and wallet in it.

“This one, of course,” he said. He didn’t even know the title, only saw the explosion of fire billowing up into the air on the back of the DVD box. He ignored the prickling of his skin like he could feel the heat. “I think this will do as a great follow-up,” he improvised.

“It’ll certainly be a nice contrast to the psychological treasure trove of Halloween Town,” she teased.

“You said I won and you can’t take it back, sweetheart. Deal’s a deal.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, but let’s get some grub first, okay?” She nodded towards the door and he tossed the movie onto her bed and left into the hall. She spun around to lock the door, giving him one final peek at the nightstand and the drawer that  _might_  hold another secret of hers he wasn’t meant to see.

* * *

 

In the glory of Chinese takeout, the film’s obnoxious use of pyrotechnics, and the contagious waves of laughter that they had to pause the movie for and ride out, Killian had forgotten for a moment about his past and the possibilities of Emma’s collection of sharp trinkets. He couldn’t torture himself with worry when there was no chance of solving this mystery without further proof or some sort of confession from Emma. He let it be and paid attention to what was within his control, making sarcastic remarks about the movie which she found hilarious.

“You picked it!” She elbowed him, stealing one of his potstickers in the process.

They didn’t stop their marathon after that. Around 1:00AM, she began to stream a TV show she wanted to introduce to him. One episode later, a few yawns sneaked up on them, and two episodes after that, they were both completely knocked out on her little bed.

Killian slept dreamlessly, only waking up because of a cramp in his arm. He wasn’t sure what time it was, but morning was definitely approaching as the blue glow of new light touched wherever her lamp cast shadows. He stifled a yawn, not wanting to move until he remembered where he was and who was sleeping next to him.

Emma had curled up in the other direction and as he sat up, he took her in for a moment, this peaceful Emma, uninhabited by everything except lightness and sleep, and despite their fantastic night together, he didn’t want to ruin it by possibly overcrowding her in a few hours when she woke up.

He eased off the bed and gathered his things, turning off her TV, closing her laptop, and gently pulling the folded throw blanket from under her feet at the end of the bed in the process. He stretched out the light woven wool and lay it over her and his eyes fell to that drawer again, the one she seemed to naturally face in her sleep. He could practically imagine her arm outstretched, yanking it open in a crash of anger—

He stopped himself. It could all be  _nothing_. She might just like knives and threw all her miscellaneous sharp tools in there for safety’s sake. He remembered something his therapist once told him, ‘Just because some people behave in certain ways doesn’t guarantee that everyone else will follow those patterns, too, Killian.’ Then again, the woman had been referring to his father’s drinking, but he still thought it was applicable at times.

Crossing the room, he slowly tore a piece of paper from her desk and wrote a quick message before folding it down the middle, placing it under her lamp, and shutting it off. He pulled her locked door closed behind him and with a soft ‘click,’ he headed back in the direction of home.

Unlike Killian, it didn’t take Emma long at all to remember that Killian had been beside her when she fell asleep, so when she awoke, she immediately turned over but found only an empty room. She let her head fall back into her pillow and scooted towards the middle of the tiny bed before drifting back to sleep. Her alarm blared into the late morning a few hours later and when she swiped it to shut it off, her hand brushed against the little slip of paper Killian had left for her to find.

_‘Good morning, Sleeping Beauty. Didn’t want to wake you, text me when you get up. –K’_

Suddenly she felt awake enough to jump out of bed to start rummaging through her clothes.

It was movie night.

* * *

 

With a caffeine kick for the both of them, Emma and Killian ran around, setting up for the early evening movie, but honestly mostly everything was done an hour in. With the ever organized Mary Margaret giving out directions and helping Anna channel her nervous enthusiasm into solid direction, there just wasn’t much to do other than throwing and trying to catch popcorn in their mouths, hidden behind the counter of the lobby desk in the drama theater.

“You hit me in the eye!” Emma cried out, throwing a handful back at him.

“Maybe if you’d stop bloody moving—”

“Having fun, you two?” David peeked over the counter and discovered a guilty Killian and Emma sitting on a carpet covered in popcorn. “You know you’re cleaning this up, right?”

“Yes,  _dad_ ,” Emma said dryly, throwing a piece of popcorn and hitting him right in the forehead.

“Emma,” he commanded, but laughed when she kept pelting him with popcorn after popcorn, “Hey, stop!”

“She has pretty good aim, doesn’t she? Launched a bloody pillow into my face last night,” Killian said, munching on his remaining popcorn like he wasn’t aware of David’s confused and slightly serious face.

 _‘The little shit,’_  she regarded Killian silently.

“Last night?” David asked.

She cut in, “Killian brought me back a snack when he came to check on me after.”

“Huh,” was all David responded. “Okay. Well, get this cleaned up. Mary Margaret wants people pulling out the things for the march.”

“Yes, sir,” Killian said with a salute. David eyed him for a moment, but left them to clean up their mess.

But Emma initiated a new battle by throwing the first popcorn instead.

“Not taking orders from Snow White, I see.”

“There’s plenty of people here. David just doesn’t want me having fun—and nailing you in the head with popcorn is most definitely fun. Why bother trying to dodge it?” she giggled.

“Dave doesn’t want you having fun with  _me_.”

“Oh, stop. He likes you, he just doesn’t know it yet.”

“He finds my humor off-putting. I sensed it in the café yesterday.”

“That’s because no one ever keeps him on his toes.” She clasped her hands together. “Aww, if you think about it, you two have the makings of a beautiful love story yet. Poor Snow White. It seems her true love’s already taken by the boy with very poor aim,” she moved her head to the side right as he threw one at her. She tossed another popcorn kernel perfectly at his head.

“I’m detecting some jealousy, Swan, but don’t worry. I assure you, there are plenty of other blondes in the sea than ol’ Dave there.”

She rolled her eyes, leaned over, and simply dumped the rest over his head.

* * *

 

Once watching Killian wrestle with a taped-up broken broom had lost its fun, Emma dug out the vacuum. After a run-in with an extremely pleasant and excited Mary Margaret, Emma concluded that David was just trying to ruin their fun earlier, but he was distracted now, setting up his spot for him and Mary Margaret in a secluded corner of the theater, just as she’d predicted the hormone-raging couple would.

Emma raced to her seat between Elsa and Killian from the microwave in the student’s lounge across the hall. Everyone settled and as Anna dimmed down the lights, the movie began.

She liked her mindless comedies more, but it was still interesting. With the intense, abrupt bursts of violence from one of the main characters and the chaotic despair from the other, the offset of a romantic-comedy trope of a dance competition followed by a ‘guy gets girl’ kiss wasn’t enough to snap her out of the fear that only she seemed to retain for these two people.

The movie ended positively—loose-ends were tied, money was won back in a luck-defying bet, their dance competition was successful despite being unprofessional participants—and these two broken people found each other and managed to work through their issues enough to be together in the end.

But she was still distressed about them.

She was fearful for whatever fictional future lay ahead for still recovering Pat and unpredictable Tiffany. What Emma had gotten from this film was that recovery was like trying to walk on ice—slow and steady wins the race, but even then you can  _still_  fall on your ass just because gravity felt like it.

What if Pat had another episode—a “manic” episode, they called it, where he’s taken over by the urge to do something reckless? What if in his moment of ‘unusual elation,’ he goes off and does something he regrets later? What happens to his relationship with his parents, with Tiffany? What even happens to her and her vaguely described condition?

These things filled Emma with anxiety. She excused herself quickly while Anna was switching films and walked to the bathroom, holding up in a stall and just sitting there, allowing her frustration and confusion to show on her face freely in the cramped space.

 _‘There’s hope,’_  she told herself. The positive thing was that Pat was taking charge of his life, changing courses to someplace with new opportunities. Even for Tiffany, that one day the pain of being widowed would subside enough so that she could process the pain that existed elsewhere.

But as Emma sat there, head back against the tile and counting down the minutes until she’d have to go back for round two of movie themes she made a point not to watch in her free time, she considered silently,  _‘I don’t like this. Getting attached to fictional characters. Where’s the cheap laughter? I want my heart pumping from a car chase not someone’s issues…’_

Her mind didn’t quit as she then wondered if she was like Pat at all—with all that instability and rage, even if she didn’t take it out on anyone but herself. Or what about Tiffany—with a darkness that drew on her past? Was the madness from the past year an entirely separate entity? Did it feed on all her unresolved experiences? Were the two the same and was it a permanent part of herself?

Should could hear Anna’s voice ringing from the theater.

 _‘Fuck,’_  she thought.  _‘Round two.’_

* * *

 

If Round One was uncomfortable, Round Two was absolutely horrific.

She almost hated Killian for suggesting it and half of the theater’s audience for voting in favor of it.

This movie didn’t even have the nice little side story of a dance competition or sports games. This story was straight up raw and unfiltered anxiety, depression, panic, despair, fear, hopelessness…

She constantly surveyed the faces around her throughout the movie to see if anyone was having the same reaction as her, but all she could make out was Killian’s controlled expression and Elsa’s pensiveness. She, on the other hand, was freaking the fuck out. Something had to be wrong with her. How could the story of some high school kid pressured by a prestigious school (one like she’d never attended) and too much future hit her so hard like this? Sure, school felt like a hopeless wasteland at times and the future scared the crap out of her when David wasn’t helping direct it, but she was in  _college_. She made it passed high school. She was in her twenties, not a teenager. There was no reason for her to feel that lost when she was already technically an adult.

Right?

Apparently not—she wasn’t right because the movie threw in more characters, some a lot older than her as the adult and young adult wards merged together in the  _hospital_. That’s right, this movie was taking place smack dab in a psychiatric hospital.

She despaired for some patients, her nerves totally shot, while she felt the grief of concern for others, but worst of all, she felt kinship and identified with the rest. The block in her mind protecting her from anything too probing or provoking couldn’t handle tonight’s movie lineup and had abandoned her during the last film as she compared her similar and sometimes  _identical_  situations to the patients.

For instance, one patient never left his room and was always asleep in bed, and she thought of those weekends she spent in total darkness, dreading the upcoming week and staying asleep to avoid the ache in her chest that grew worse every time she wished she could just disappear from her waking life outside.

She hadn’t realized how much she was fidgeting, how she nearly picked and bit her nails down to the nub until Killian’s hand found hers in the dark theater and pulled it back down to her lap. He held it for a moment, but she pulled away. She didn’t want to be touched. She didn’t want to watch this movie either, yet was anxious about missing even the tiniest thing, especially as they introduced a young girl with scars on her face.

Without them having to say it, Emma  _knew_  those must have been self-inflicted.

And after an hour and a half of shifting, fiddling, and grimacing like she was going to be sick, the movie began to wrap itself up. Craig, the main character—the high school boy who’d checked himself into the hospital for suicidal ideation in very pro-active fashion despite his own anguish—found purpose in healing other people and also uncovered a passion for art. He went on to help people, to do great things once he’d started taking his prescribed medication again. And he, as was the last word of the film, went on to ‘live.’

Anna opened up an audience wide conversation after the movie. A few professors showed up and so did the psychological service’s school counselors along with some advocates from local crisis support groups. Everyone talked, shared, informed, and even laughed. People proudly declared their struggles with mental illness and some shared their experiences in knowing people with illnesses, too.

But Emma was lost and for thirty minutes she didn’t process a single word. Her mind replayed over and over again key moments from both films.

She replaced herself behind Tiffany’s heavy makeup, flipping out outside a diner. She put herself as the person behind Pat’s relentless fists. She was all of a sudden the girl with scars on her face instead of the scars on her legs. She was the man who attempted to kill himself six times. She was the patient who didn’t want to leave his bed and the teenage boy incapacitated by his mistakes, terror, angst, and hopelessness.

“Are there any final thoughts about tonight’s films, themes, or characters? Anything else you’d like to share about what you learned?” Anna facilitated.

Emma learned that depression liked to sneak up on people and could change you from the person you used to be to this person just trying to survive the now. She learned from Craig that it messed with your sleep, appetite, and ability to do normal everyday tasks. She learned that depression liked to take everything you loved away from you; leaving you with this sad, clueless confusion of,  _‘That used to make me happy, but now it doesn’t work… I guess I’ve grown out of it. I must’ve grown out of a lot of things lately.’_

Depression made you think that nothing was wrong and manipulated you into considering things that wouldn’t have ever crossed your mind before—dark things, angry things, graveness, melancholy, guilt, doubt, self-worth, purpose… Endings. Mental illness, she imagined, was like those evil kings from her fantasy books, sitting on a throne inside of you; their sadistic wishes, their conquer of you and their smothering sinister presences.

“Alright, thank you, everybody! Please feel free to take some pins and some flyers with you about the upcoming march! We’re teaming up with great organizations this year—”

The character Craig found help, got treatment. He was going to do great things in his fictional life in an effort to live as someone better, healthier, happier.

But Emma wasn’t there yet.

She couldn’t see that flash-forward ending of the movie that left everyone else feeling motivated and hopeful. She was still stuck in the scene of Craig’s dream, taking one step closer off the Brooklyn Bridge. She was sitting in chairs belonging to sterile offices, answering questions she didn’t know how to communicate in any other language but her own. She was still sleeping in a plain, empty room in the inpatient program of a New York hospital with no desire to get up.

She didn’t understand Craig, Pat, and Tiffany’s happy endings because she couldn’t even imagine one for herself.

She thought about this throughout clean up, avoiding direct conversation with everyone.

She mulled it over as she agreed to a camping trip for their upcoming Spring Break with her new group of friends who would never let her escape this outing together even if she’d tried.

She ran over clinical terms and the pronunciations of medications discussed between Pat and Tiffany as Elsa asked to be her tent-mate and Killian refused to be Victor’s.

She kept running through everything she’d realized, the parallels between her life and these movie characters’, as Dorothy threatened to tie Victor to a tree with honey poured on his head if he made one more comment about sharing a sleeping bag with her and Ruby. As everyone laughed, as everyone said their good-byes, and as Killian wished her a goodnight and to call him if she couldn’t’ sleep, she was shell-shocked.

“What?” she asked, finally coming back out of her head. Everyone was dispersing.

“You look a little out of sorts,” he said, noting how her arms crossed in front of her like she was putting whatever she could between them.

“I’m just tired. We had a marathon last night and then one today. I think I’m going to be burnt out on entertainment for a while.”

“As I said, Emma, if you can’t sleep, just give me a ring. Any time, it doesn’t matter.” He gave a soft reassuring smile because he knew tonight had gotten to her. Maybe he didn’t know how deep it resonated, but he knew. He always fucking new—and knowing that he knew made her want to groan.

She didn’t want him to know anything more that night.

“Yeah. For sure. See ya,” she said and left without waiting for his goodbye. She was confused about being relieved, and relieved about having a potential name for everything she was experiencing.

She might have a little bit of ‘depression.’

 _‘David said he has a tent for us,’_  Elsa sent to her.

She might have a big problem with ‘self-mutilation,’ ‘self-harm,’ ‘self-injury.’

 _‘I need to go back home and inventory all the camping gear on Wednesday. Wanna come? Mom says you better come visit her. She misses us,’_  David asked in another notification.

She might be on her way to having full-blown ‘panic attacks.’

 _‘To everyone: I just want to thank everybody for a great night again! We should throw a pizza party or something next meeting. Suggestions?’_  Anna messaged.

She might have something beyond her new comprehension of the mental health field because she was sure it wasn’t normal to be ‘triggered’ by so many things, or to suffer all these drops, dips, and dives all the time.

 _‘You left your scarf. Want me to bring it by right now?’_ said a message from Killian.

She might have a serious problem to deal with.

_‘Emma?’_

She might have an actual mental illness and she was terrified.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gauging whether or not you have a mental illness can take precious time away from you that can be spent confiding in a counselor. You don't have to have a diagnosis to talk it out. Plenty of people, especially students undergoing the stress of test-taking, time management, and course loads, need to talk to someone and counselors are there for everyone no matter what kind of issue you're going through. "Small" or "Big", they're all equally important and can all affect your health. The movies mentioned are "Silver Linings Playbook" and "It's Kind of a Funny Story" (and good ol' 'The Nightmare Before Christmas' for Killian and Emma's marathon night).
> 
> As always, take care of yourselves, lovelies. Be good to yourselves, you really deserve it.


	5. A Little Help From My Friends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Such a good song, 'With A Little Help From My Friends.' I recommend the Across the Universe version, too. I'm getting side-tracked, I hope you enjoy this chapter!

Emma shifted, again, then back the other way until she was facing her nightstand once more. Her hand found the knob then the smooth pearly handle of her knife inside. She listened to the click of it opening and locking into place… Then the click of it shutting. She heard the thud it made when it flopped out of her hand back to the bottom of the drawer and finally the slide of the drawer closing.

She did this for hours. Opening, closing. Opening, closing. Almost cutting, not cutting.

She asked herself two questions in the hours after movie night _—“So, mental illness. Potentially. Now what?”_  and  _“It’s just one line. Another line. Why don’t I do it already?”_

Because as of 12:01AM, one minute into the new day, Emma Swan was now four days ‘clean’ and self-harm free. She didn’t intend for this, the act of doing it just slipped her mind with nothing challenging her to survive lately. How free it felt to go through life this way; to have an awkward conversation or an uncomfortable encounter without feeling the weight of her industrial safety pin from work already in her hand, to feel her heart race with the anticipation of it. To blunder, mess up, and fuck up without immediately imagining the feel of the edge torturing her until she forgot about everything and anything but that pain; because this pain she inflicted on herself was about survival and getting through to another day, another situation.

Normally she liked pins because she could swipe it in any direction, in blinding, frenzied anger or through the blur of tears distorting everything around her and in her life. Shallow but aching. It was her go-to evil. But the last day she cut, just that Wednesday before, she used her knife to draw one single line along her leg, the very line that Kristoff and Victor helped re-open when they’d bulldozed her down. That one line encompassed her entire day of working Wednesday—well, her entire day of fucking up, more accurately.

She had known it was going to be a horrible shift before she’d even gotten there. She could feel the misery in her bones as she put on her apron and fastened it tightly with the giant palm-sized safety pin. It started with a few wrong drinks—“I’m so sorry! I don’t know where my head is today. Let me get you your Pepsi,”—then several messed up orders to which the cook scolded, “What is up with you today?” She’d accidentally given an alcoholic drink meant for a father to his son which, thank the universe, they’d laughed off, actually left her a good-sized tip, and didn’t mention one word to her manager who already had her on his shit list because of a slight confrontation with a customer, an old sexist geezer with a foul mouth who made a comment about her ass. (In hindsight, she could have pretended to be a bit more apologetic when confronted by management.)

But the cherry on top of a terrible day at work was when she dropped an entire tray—five plates worth of food on a sitting customer, a newly wiped down diner table, on the shoes of another customer, and finally on herself, searing red tomato sauce all over her pants. Which all led to another meeting with her manager before she practically ran to her car the moment her shift ended, drove home like a lunatic, and dealt herself that single line.

The day of the book incident, she would’ve kept adding more to her terrible little collection of scars if Killian hadn’t texted her a warning that he was ‘utterly bored’ and would be outside her room in less than ten minutes.

But that was it. In comparison to that Wednesday shift from hell, nothing the next day seemed able to upset her as much. The C- she’d gotten back on a test on Thursday? She didn’t even have time to mourn over it before she had run over to catch the meeting at the Psych Services Center, and by the time she’d gotten back home, she was already too absorbed in a text message battle of emojis with Elsa to truly feel the need to escape that C-.

And Friday, to be honest though, if Killian hadn’t shown up with a donut at her door and slept over, she probably would’ve hurt herself way more than those few scratches on her chest made by her blunted nails. Did that count though? Those scratches weren’t even a fraction as bad as opening up that drawer and actually dealing herself some slashes. No, she’d count it as a win, another day clean. Why not? It’s not like anyone  _else_  was keeping track.

Then there was earlier today—Saturday, forced to watch movies about subjects she wasn’t comfortable confronting unless on neat little bullet lists in pamphlets she folded with Killian and David; ones she never bother to read over.

But now, twenty minutes after midnight, she was already into a new Sunday, still clean, still empty-handed, and still restless.

Soon her question,  _“Why don’t I just cut already?”_  began to fade away and her,  _“Great. I might be sick. Really, officially sick. What do I do now?”_ panic dulled as a new question entered in her mind.

_‘I wonder if Killian is awake.’_

Killian had said to call and that it didn’t matter what time it was. He’d made himself completely available to her if she wanted to talk and right about now, she needed to talk. Maybe not about the movies particularly, but to at least do something other than tossing and turning and debating about causing herself pain.

Bothering Killian with a midnight conversation was definitely the more appealing alternative, so she called. Killian was lounging in bed against his single flattened pillow and woefully comparing his minimally adorned bed to Emma’s giant cotton cloud of a mattress covered in a bunch of less-sad pillows when his phone sprang to life.

“Hello, love. Can’t sleep?”

“You have no idea,” she replied not knowing that he’d actually been wondering on and off for the last few hours whether she was upset, if she was alright, and if she’d ever used one of the many tools inside that nightstand drawer of hers against her own skin when she was upset. So, he had some idea, even if he couldn’t confirm it himself. “I was losing my mind trying to get sleep,” she sighed.

“Nope, we can’t have that. I need your help and mind intact this week, actually.”

“Must be a tough job if you need me sane.”

“Very. Your assignment, Agent Swan, is to quiz me in flashcards and not let me give up as easily as Kristoff lets me. Do you accept this mission?”

“Flashcards?” she laughed. “Do people even still buy those? You know they have websites for that. They’ll even generate quizzes for practice.”

“Call me old-fashioned. Besides, it’ll be much easier recalling your lovely voice than all the words getting muddled up in my head.”

“When you read, what does the voice in your head sound like?”

“Depends. I hear yours, all dry and sarcastic, when I do stupid things though.”

“Oh great! That makes me sound like loads of fun,” she said with that same sarcasm. “I’m the voice in your head that calls you out on your shit.”

“Yes and it makes me smile every time,” he chuckled.

“How is this a good thing? It means I nag.”

“It means that my voice of reason sounds amazingly like you and has some wit to it,” he countered. “The nagging is reserved for my brother. Couldn’t forget the sound of him lecturing me even if I tried.”

“Man, having siblings sounds rough.”

“Only when they’re scolding. Or stealing cookies from you.”

She put out an exaggerated gasp. “What a monster!”

“No, Swan,  _I_  was the one stealing cookies.”

“Oh, well in that case, how adorable.” She imagined a little Killian, sneaking up behind his big brother and thieving baked goods away.

“See how easily you turned? I knew you loved me,” he grinned.

“Don’t push it.”

“If you didn’t you wouldn’t try to survive all my rambling.”

“Can’t argue with you there,” she teased. She savored the sound of his laughter over her phone and glanced around her lifeless, dull room. “I’m seriously restless right now. I could probably run laps.”

“Then let’s go run laps. It’s surprisingly warm tonight—Spring is here.”

“It’s almost one o’clock in the morning.”

“Only four more until sunrise.”

“When you put it that way, why even bother sleeping?”

“ _Exactly_ ,” he said with mischief.

“Alright, night owl. What do you suggest we do?”

“I say we walk to town, go to that little 24-hour café, get some coffee, some food, then make our way back to one of our rooms and marathon that show you had me watch the other day because I’m hooked, but also don’t want to pay for a subscription to watch it—sound good?”

“Stealing cookies. Stealing my video subscription. What next?”

“Stealing you away from your dorm, of course, and venturing off into the night. So, can I head over? What do you say?”

“I say…” She glanced over at her nightstand, the drawer still cracked open. She slammed it shut. “Hurry up.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

* * *

 

“I’m sorry about the mess,” Killian apologized, balancing their take-out bag of snacks, his coffee, and keys while opening the door.

“You call this a mess?” Emma nearly laughed. In comparison to his room, hers was an outright disaster zone.

“I didn’t pick up the stuff off the floor.”

“You have like one jacket and a pair of shoes  _not_  lined up with the rest of them—and both of which are in the corner of your  _spotless_  room. Oh my god, is your bookshelf sorted by color?”

He started to get a little pink in the ears, but maintained his cool smile all the same. He shrugged. “I look at them more than I read them, so alphabetizing seemed pointless.”

“You were going to alphabetize?” she giggled. “This is amazing.” She knelt down to admire the rows of books mimicking the gradient of the color spectrum. Reds blended seamlessly to oranges, to yellows, and so on.

“I was bored one day.”

“Everything is so neat,” she observed the entire room.

“Thank you.”

“Not sure if it’s a compliment. Seriously, who needs  _that_  many paperclips? How many essays you write in here a day?”

“Better safe than sorry.”

“You have labels on your pen holders.”

“Your point?”

“You really need a label for your cup full of highlighters that says, ‘HIGHLIGHTERS’?”

“Like I said, I get bored and, yeah, I suppose I go a little overboard sometimes.”

She continued to pick and point until he rolled his eyes and steered her away from his desk. “You keep poking fun at all my things. I have feelings, you know.”

“Oh yeah?” she asked. As he nudged her forward, she spun in his grasp. His breath caught, overwhelmed by the whirl of golden hair then bright sparkling green eyes looking up at him.

In moments like these he wondered how he had any self-control not to just ask her out on the spot and put an end to this coy game they played, but he knew that right now, their game was the only thing he could get. He liked her, he liked her enormously, but there was still so much she wouldn’t share and he knew he’d rather have her friendship than ruin it, despite the tightness in his chest whenever she surprised him with her spark like this. In an instant he was self-conscious that she could maybe see everything he was feeling right now, maybe even feel it herself since she was standing so close.

If she had, she’d properly ignored it. “Where were my feelings when you were nitpicking at my room?” she replied.

“Touché.”

Her eyes fell to the neat stack of hefty brown-paper covered books on the chair by his bed. Textbooks, neatly covered with labels on the side. She made out one that said ‘Statistics 100’ on it. “Your textbooks, too?”

“I’m keeping them pristine so I can sell them off later.”

“The labels though. You couldn’t just write on the spine, ‘Stats’? Killian, be honest with me, do you actually own a label maker?”

Yes, he did.

“This is priceless.”

“It was on sale, Swan,” he whined. “Stop making fun of me and help me push the bed to the wall to we can watch.”

“You’re a freak,” she laughed, and when he thought about the haunted and almost traumatized look she’d had on her face when they’d parted after the movie, he grinned back. He’d happily let her tease him if it meant her being this relaxed again. “So, I guess this is really going to be an all-nighter,” she changed the subject, helping Killian push his bed back so they could rest against the wall, the laptop she brought already propped up on a TV tray in front of it.

“We’re young. We can manage it, but just in case we do pass out, just kick me off the bed and stay the night. No walking home by yourself.”

“I’m not a damsel, Killian.”

“But I’m a gentleman and I know you’d sneak out of here without waking me up, so this is me formally asking you, ‘Please don’t.’ I’ll feel horrible about it in the morning.”

“Or afternoon. I know how much you can sleep. You’ll be dead to the world until at least noon.”

“Says the girl who was in bed until five in the afternoon just the other day.”

“It was my day off of everything, don’t judge me,” she smiled. “Hand me a muffin?”

“We should catch the sunrise somewhere,” he said, digging into their bag of muffins, the remainders of the day which meant half-off the price. “Any suggestions?”

“How about the drop-off?”

“What’s the drop-off?”

“You don’t know the drop-off? The old parking lot by the cliff. They fenced it off when it started eroding away. I go there all the time.”

“At dawn?”

“No, usually after my shifts. I like watching the waves or just hearing them at night.”

“Okay, the drop-off it is.”

“That easy, huh?”

“Sure, one of Emma Swan’s favorite secret places. Can’t pass that up. Now, a more important question—do you want the blueberry muffin or the chocolate, or split them?”

They split them and watched a story unfold on the little screen until the sky turned around them and brought with it light. A season nearly completed, Emma and Killian abandoned their mess of wrappers, crumbs on the wrinkled covers of his bed, and headed out the door a little light-headed from their rebellion against sleep.

“Don’t forget this,” Killian said, holding out the maroon scarf hanging by the door. It was the one she’d left in the theater.

“I don’t think I’ll need it, it wasn’t too cold tonight.”

“Emma Swan. Are you trying to leave your things in my room?”

“What, to guarantee you’ll have to let me back in? Yeah, that’s totally my intention.” She rolled her eyes.

“You’re a clingy date.”

“Oh shut up. My laptop’s here. I  _have_  to come back.”

“You can stay anytime you like, Emma,” he said seriously.

“Uh-oh. That might not be wise to offer. You said to call anytime and I took advantage of that within hours. You’ll never be rid of me now.”

“I’d never want to be rid of you, especially since I now know your password to Netflix.”

“You’re terrible.”

“Come on, we’ll be late for the sunrise,” he urged, scooting her out the door and shutting it behind them.

* * *

 

She had never visited the drop-off for sunrise before. Of all the times she’d driven here confused, upset, a nervous wreck, or feeling hollow inside, this time being by Killian’s side—perched up on the cracked and sunken ledge of a piece of concrete with her feet dangling against the rusted and bent steel of rebar poking out—she felt completely tranquil. Watching the sunrise was beautiful from her room when she was feeling good enough to appreciate it, but this—the sun being pulled up by the sky from the sea—and the way it mixed with the fuzziness of her tired mind was a surreal experience. She felt overwhelmed by a calm she rarely felt and was finally ready to ask Killian the question that had plagued her earlier.

“Killian, the movie got me thinking… How do people know when it’s serious? Like, seriously time to start re-evaluating things?”

“You mean, how do we know when things can be different for us?”

“Sure.”

“I can’t speak for everyone, but I didn’t even know things could be different when I started therapy at my aunt and uncle’s request.”

“So, you didn’t want to go?”

“No, not at all,” he laughed a little. “I didn’t want therapy and I definitely didn’t want things to change, no matter how miserable I was.”

“Why not, if you weren’t happy?”

“Because it was all I knew. My mum was gone and my father was still alive, so I was angry. I had to leave my old hometown which made me unhappy, to say the least. I had to leave behind my first girlfriend, Milah, which nearly sent me off the deep end. And, my brother resented me… So, I felt alone. But it’s all I had left, proof that life had done me wrong and I wasn’t ready to let that go.”

“So, when did you?”

“My brother came back around when I was sixteen and he was a changed man. He wasn’t angry at everyone or even me anymore. He was my brother again and I think that’s what helped me most. You have David, I’m sure you know how good it feels to have a big brother always in your corner. I just didn’t feel alone anymore, but it was still hard.” He turned towards her. “And when I was pulling my grades back up and going to school again, I didn’t really know why I was doing it. I didn’t think that what I was doing was taking little steps toward something better. But I did it anyway and now here I am, sitting with you at this university and I wouldn’t change it for the world.”

“So you weren’t just like, ‘I’m going to change my life around and do good’ all of a sudden?”

“Nope. But I did stop preparing for the end. I started thinking,  _‘What would I do if I didn’t think I would be dead three years from now?’_  and did it. Eventually, I just stopped feeling like the end was coming for me all the time.”

Killian watched Emma who was staring intently at the waves crashing below them. He wondered what was going through her head, hoping she would share it the more he shared about himself.

“I didn’t have an ‘Ah-ha!’ moment that made me want to change my life or the person I had become with all the crap that happened to me. I just blindly went on trusting the good judgment of my counselor and my aunt and uncle, my brother even. Then one day, I’m here in college and I realized how vastly changed my life was. Just out of the blue one day, I looked around and knew I’d made it out alive.”

“Thank you, for being so open with me. I’m sorry I’m not good at finding things to say back.”

“I think you have so much you want to say that it gets stuck. It’ll flow easy one day, you’ll see,” he assured her a nudge of his shoulder against hers. “What’re you thinking about?” he asked after more of her silence.

“I’m thinking about the second movie; the one with the high school kid, Craig.”

“What about it?”

“He went to the hospital for what was it? ‘Suicidal ideas’?”

“Ideation.”

“Right, that. He was alone in making that decision to go there and check himself in. But, before that, he was already seeing a doctor. Did he start seeing the doctor in the first place because  _he_  approached his parents, or did his  _parents_  approach him? How did he even know there was a problem? Or how did  _they_  know there was a problem?”

“Can’t answer that. They never mention how exactly he got involved with all of it.”

“Now  _that_  would be a movie. The ones we watched were all aftermath stuff, it only summarized how they got to the point of, what do you call it, ‘treatment’? We didn’t see a whole lot of the before parts.”

“That’s an excellent point to bring up at the next meeting.”

“Really?”

“Of course. Those movies served to give hope to people who were already comfortable with the idea of mental health, but for people who weren’t—”

“It’s a big shock  _and_  hard to identify with,” she finished. “Like, they should show more of how you know something’s wrong… Wrong enough to do something about it.”

“Well, in my classes, they define an illness as something that hinders your ability to function in everyday activities.”

“And what if you don’t know or remember what it’s like to ‘function’ normally?”

“Then it’s definitely time to talk to someone. Anyone,” he stressed, wishing she would just come out with it to him so he could help her the way her listening helped him.

“What do  _you_  say is a disorder or a problem?”

“I suppose… I would say it was when I couldn’t stand being me anymore and everything felt like it was falling apart because of it. How I couldn’t stop it by myself from happening.”

“Killian?”

“Yes?”

“How?” she asked quietly. It was such a short question, but it weighed a ton in an already thick conversation of heavy confessions and heavier concepts. It was so immense of a question, but one he understood anyway.  _How_  do you stop it—all of it, everything they’d been talking about. How do you change your world and yourself?

“Mainly, I stopped keeping it only to myself. Because when you do that, you give it power over you and I was tired of feeling out of control.”

“Secrets.”

“They’ll kill you slowly.”

Even though it seemed like they were miles away, the crash of waves against the rocks they sat above boomed and thundered as if they were right by her feet. For the first time in minutes, Emma met his eyes with a vulnerability that made him want nothing more than to hold her close to him and reassure her that none of this, none of her hinted trauma or struggles, would be as daunting and intimidating as it seemed as long as she had someone there to listen to her when she needed to be heard. But he was afraid to touch her because Emma had been through a lot in her life, but knowing that he was still there, present and around as much as he always made himself to be, was enough for her; at least in the place she was in right now.

“I’m not perfect, Emma,” he emphasized. “I still have my doubts about me, who I am, what I want to be. I don’t know what I’m doing a lot of the time, but I already hit that decision where I had two options: Try to change or give up. I picked ‘Try’ because we have to fight for what we want and I know you know that more than anyone.”

Her heart beat harder, frantically thudding inside her chest. It was too much, it was too thick for her to breathe. She was starting to feel trapped in the intricately woven honesty of his stories and words, she could feel the stick of it like a web. It made her want to share, too, but if she did, it would all flood out and she wasn’t ready for that. She couldn’t handle it. Her secrets might kill her slowly, but letting it all out would rip her apart.

“You know you can tell me anything, love.”

“Um…” She swallowed, all of a sudden noticing how dry her throat was from talking and the ache of sitting on cold, solid cement for so long. “I could really go for a drink or something right about now. My throat’s kind of scratchy.”

“Sure. Yeah, the sun’s up anyway. We have officially stayed up into a new day like the proper reckless college youths we are,” he smiled, masking his disappointment of yet again being kept at a distance from what was truly going on with her. But he wouldn’t take for granted that expression she’d made, of being caught off-guard when she was so used to being behind impenetrable walls. He stood and brushed off his jeans then helped pull her up, too. “Shall we? We only have one episode left before we finish, too.”

“Sounds good,” she smiled, thankful for the space he’d given her to take a step back and breathe away from this all. He was a good ally and Emma was thankful for him.

* * *

 

Their conversation had grown lively, their banter back and their smiles permanent on their faces, then when they rounded the hall back towards his room, Emma noticed Killian’s steps faltering at the sight of a tall man whose dark hair curled up at the ends and was wearing a black peacoat.

“Little brother,” he greeted with a faint smile. He immediately stood up straighter, making himself appear even taller, and Emma surmised that it was probably a habit learned from the navy he served in.

“ _Younger_  brother,” Killian threw back effortlessly like they’d done this a million times before. He walked up to the man and hugged him.  _Younger_  as Killian may be, Emma saw only a little brother embracing his big brother and smiled. “What are you doing here, Liam?”

“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?” Liam asked. She almost felt nervous, but reminded herself that she and Killian were only friends—she had nothing to be nervous about. (Or so she tried to convince herself.)

“This is Emma. Emma, my brother Liam.”

“Hi, nice to meet you,” she spoke confidently, hoping that her insecurity was well-hidden as she compared her relaxed, even slouchy, posture to his proper one.

“And you as well, Emma.”

“Seriously, Liam, what are you doing here? It’s not even seven in the bloody morning and a bit farther than you usually travel to.”

“You didn’t return our aunt’s call yesterday.”

“We had a big event going on in one of our clubs. I was going to call back today.” He omitted that he’d gotten the call during his popcorn war with Emma.

“And you didn’t answer this morning.”

“I—” Killian searched his pockets for his phone. “I must’ve left it inside. Sorry.”

“I have to speak with you about something,” he said, lowering his voice while Emma fiddled with her own phone, pretending to check her empty inbox. “But it would be best if we did so privately.”

“Sure, yeah, just a sec.” He called out a little louder for her to hear, “Emma? I’m just going to talk to my brother real quick, wait inside for me?”

“Yeah! Totally, I’ll just be—”

“You have my full permission to snoop around,” he teased.

“Shut up,” she replied automatically and rolled her eyes. He unlocked the door and let her in. Once closed, Emma debated with herself—to listen or not to listen.

She decided to listen and pressed her ear against the seam of the door.

“Now, what’s this about?” Killian asked, the concern in his voice evident.

“There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just be out with it.” He took a steadying breath and recited the details, “Father died. They think two days ago. They found him at home…” Liam still referred to the place as ‘home’ even though he hadn’t stepped foot in it since he was old enough to join the navy. “They suspect it was alcohol poisoning, but they’re doing a thorough investigation nonetheless.”

Killian said nothing. He stared passed his brother’s shoulder at some distant, hazy memory from their shared dark past.

“They only discovered because he’d missed his shifts a couple days in a row. A friend from work stopped by to check up on him; saw him half on the floor through the front window, supposedly.”

Killian still clenched his teeth together and refused to meet his brother’s watchful stare.

“Brother?” No response. Liam sighed, “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

“It must’ve been one hell of a night because that bastard’s had more alcohol in his veins than blood for decades.”

“For god’s sake, please.”

“So, what? You had to come all this way to tell me in person that he died? Waste of a trip, really.”

“Killian, I know you’re upset, but there’s some respect you have to pay to the dead—”

Killian let out a bitter laugh, it cackled with resentment. “Yeah, sure. Any other news? How’s the weather back home?” he said slightly hostile.

Emma’s eyes grew wide. Killian’s dad was dead? She wasn’t sure what he could be feeling, but from the sound of it, the way his anger was taking over, she gathered he didn’t know how to react either.

“I get it. I completely get it, little brother—”

“Younger,” he gritted.

“—But you had to know and I thought it would be best for everyone coming from me.”

“Always the good boy, Liam,” Killian snapped.

“Killian Jones, do not take your anger out on me. I’m a messenger and I know what that man was capable of and  _did_  just as much as you and mum knew, too.”

Killian sobered up a little, staring at the floor and muttering a genuine, “Sorry…” Liam grasped his shoulders and shook him a little, trying to rid his little brother of the tension building between them.

“It’s alright, I know how this all feels. Still, the funeral date’s been set—”

“I’m not going,” Killian said, eyes darting back up to Liam’s. It was void of fury this time and even annoyance. It was simply a statement.

Liam raised a brow and continued despite the interruption, “—but you don’t have to go.” He gave him a comforting smile. “No one important expects you, either of us. Probably just be barflies from the pub anyway.”

“Right.” Killian didn’t know what else to say, but then he felt the need to justify himself. “I just have a lot going on with school and I don’t want to jeopardize anything—”

“You don’t have to explain, Killian.  _He_  killed mum. He drove her to it and I don’t have to forgive him for that and neither do you. Just don’t let any of this ruin all that you’ve worked for here, okay? That was my main intention on tell you myself. Your life now is more important. I hate to say it, but a man like that doesn’t deserve you.”

“Alright…”

“Now, would you and Emma like to go for breakfast? Or should I just see you at uncle’s? I’ll be staying today and tomorrow night.”

“Yeah, that’d be best.”

“Will it interfere with your courses?”

“No, I can afford to skip them,” Killian said. Despite everything, he was a little excited about skipping his Stat class.

“Okay. Come on, bring it in,” Liam said, holding his arms out. Killian fell right into the embrace and in one heavy sigh, he released most of the darkness collecting in him. He always felt lighter in his brother’s hold. “I’ll see you tomorrow then. Tell Emma I said, ‘goodbye.’” Liam then lowered his voice as a precaution and went on, “She’s very pretty by the way.”

“We’re not dating,” Killian said quickly, copying his volume.

“I didn’t mention anything about dating, but it’s good to see where your head is at,” Liam teased, mussing up Killian’s hair and knowing full well when his little brother had a crush. “Take care ‘til then.” Liam left Killian standing in the rubble of the news, taking off as quickly as he came to reluctantly shake Killian’s world, but he wouldn’t allow his older brother’s news to throw him off track. He wouldn’t allow his father the satisfaction of having any control over his new life.

Emma was already seated on his bed, clicking away at her laptop and pulling up another episode of their show when he came in.

He regarded her for a minute and before she could say anything, he smirked knowingly. “How much of that conversation did you hear?”

She felt her cheeks flush. “…Some of it.” She tossed the laptop aside, fearing he was going to order her out of his room. “I’m so sorry—”

“For snooping, as I gave you my  _full_  permission to do, or sorry about my father?”

“The snooping.” She wasn’t sure that she was sorry that the awful man he’d called father his entire life was gone, dead from his own vices—the vices that led to his wife dying, the bruises on his son’s hearts that would probably never completely heal, or the long scar still dented into Killian’s cheek.

“Like I said, I gave you my consent. I’m glad actually because it means I don’t have to find a way to bring it up casually.” He lifted the laptop and put it back on the tray in front of the bed then settled into his spot next to Emma.

She pressed ‘play’, but before the opening credits even began to roll, she asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”

“I don’t know what to say,” he sighed, dropping his head onto her shoulder. “I’m angry, but not angry. I’m not sad, but something’s going on. I’m just… I don’t know. I’m only certain that I’m glad you’re here right now.”

“Always,” she nearly whispered, and they half-heartedly watched the show play on in silence, Killian closing his eyes a little later as he still rested against her shoulder; not sleeping, but not trying to be awake either.

Emma knew the feeling well.

* * *

 

The next day, Emma didn’t hear anything from Killian, but she hadn’t expected to. He was surely tired from their all-nighter, emotionally exhausted from the news, and busy spending time with his brother, aunt, and uncle at their home two hours away from the college.

He had a little more to say after his time with his family had passed, a little more anger to vent, and a bit more confusion to try to make sense outside of his own mind. Emma kept up with him though and heard him out, eventually even helping him back to his new life’s obligations, like studying his flashcards.

After four days, their departure to their group camping trip nearing, Killian calmed significantly; still troubled, but comforted knowing that the world and life he’d built for himself continued on happily. Anna was still cheerful. Victor was still loathsome. Ruby and Dorothy still madly in love. Kristoff was still being chastised by Elsa who still had constant acrylic paint under her fingernails from her art. Mary Margaret and David still the golden duo. And Emma still his North Star keeping him from getting lost.

Eventually the weekend rolled around, the last week of school before Spring Break coming to an end, and they strapped equipment to the top of Killian’s car when the trunk became jam-packed with everything Mary Margaret’s car couldn’t hold. Emma’s bug was simply too small to be of use on the trip, so she wistfully said goodbye to the yellow hunk of metal and hopped in with Killian, Kristoff, Anna, and Victor while Ruby, Elsa, and Dorothy crammed into the car in front of them.

The trip there wasn’t long, but setting up was. In all David’s expertise, he ended up sitting on the picnic bench studying the instructions of the grill for minutes. Emma joined him, but ended up just as confused. There was a slight drama with the tent situation. David (intentionally) had forgotten to grab an extra tent from his house and thus forcing Killian and Victor to room together. Emma sent a glare his way, she knew when he was being sneaky. Mary Margaret’s subtle glance of disapproval hinted that she suspected the same. Emma would have to have a talk with him about leaving Killian alone. After propping lanterns and flashlights around the site and in tents, their temporary outdoor home was all set up though already well into the night.

“Finally, S’mores time,” Elsa announced. “Find a stick and sharpen it up, people. If we run out of chocolate, well, every woman for herself.”

“If you ladies want, you can—” Victor was interrupted.

“Victor,” Anna scolded, “if you make a joke out of that, we’re going to prank you so bad you’ll want to hike back to civilization tomorrow.”

His lips straightened into a tight line and he effectively shut up.

Emma and Ruby emerged from the forest line. “My stick’s better than yours, it’s bigger,” Ruby said loudly.

Everyone started giggling except for Victor who rolled his eyes at the double standard placed on him.

“Oh, guys, get your minds out of the gutter. That’s where Victor’s lives.” Dorothy kissed her girlfriend mumbling,  _‘Good one, babe.’_

“Jeez, it’s kind of warm tonight,” David said.

“Tomorrow’s supposed to be a scorcher,” Mary Margaret chimed in, checking the weather on her phone.

“Hey! No cell phones during camping,” he exclaimed, looking around the campsite to see everyone’s faces glowing from their screens. “This is supposed to be  _camping_ , turn them off!”

“But we get service here,” Victor argued, playing some game that required matching and eliminating certain foods in groups of three or more.

“You’re all ridiculous,” David huffed.

“Alright, alright—it’s going back in the tent,” Emma smiled.

Elsa shut hers off, too. “So, swimming tomorrow? I’m going to die from the hot weather if we don’t. I don’t like the heat.”

Emma stiffened.

“Yeah, the creek’s seriously just around that corner,” Dorothy said, pointing at the tall redwoods with a wooden plank nailed to one—they guessed it must’ve announced the obvious, that there was a swimming hole that way, but it was too dark to make out.

“Everyone agreed then? We’ll wake up at eight, make breakfast, then go swimming around ten.”

A chorus of ‘Yes’s and general approval rang from across the site, except from Killian who stayed quiet, too busy observing Emma who was frenziedly snapping pieces off her branch. He had his suspicions about her self-harming and wondered if she’d put it to rest by swimming with them tomorrow. She didn’t.

“I think I’ll just stay behind,” Emma said nonchalantly.

“What?!”

“Why?!”

“No, you have to come, Emma!”

Everyone protested and she was grateful that the glow of the fire cast everything in amber light because she knew her cheeks and ears were turning red.

“I don’t like the water.”

“It’s not deep, Ems,” David assured her. “Most of it is three to four feet at most.”

“I didn’t bring a swim suit.” She was really trying to get them to back off, but then came, as she predicted, the offers from everyone.  _‘You can borrow one of mine!’_ they all insisted, to which she replied, “Sure, maybe. I don’t know.”

The matter was laid to rest and when everyone retreated to their tents after a couple hours of lounging around the fire, Emma lay awake in her sleeping bag next to Elsa who was already dead asleep. She remembered Killian’s formal definition of a disorder,  _‘Something that hinders your ability to function in everyday activities.’_  Swimming wasn’t necessarily an everyday activity for her, but she understood what he meant all the same. Her scratching and cutting was  _hindering_  her from enjoying something as simple as hanging out at the water on a hot day with all her friends. She hated herself for it.

She fell asleep to the sound of the brook babbling, Elsa’s rhythmic breathing, and the taunting of her own self-loathing.

* * *

 

“Dorothy, why are you going to take a shower when we’re going into the creek in less than thirty minutes? We’re camping,” Ruby said.

“I hardly call it camping if there are working showers and bathrooms on site. You ladies are such babies when it comes to dirt,” Victor said dryly, walking toward them wearing swim fins and goggles with a snorkel hanging around his neck.

“Hey, flippers,” Ruby called out to him and flipped him off. “Flip this.”

“I take showers in the morning, you know this.” Dorothy shrugged. “And I’ll take another one when I get out. I don’t bathe in the creek.”

“I don’t even feel gross or anything after swimming in creeks. It’s all running water.”

“That’s because you were some mangy forest creature in a past life.”

“Animals speak to me, it’s why I’m going to be a zoologist,” Ruby said proudly.

“C’mon, Emma. Please? At least come down to the beach. There’s tons of shady spots. Bring a book or something.  _Please?_ ” Elsa begged.

“Fine, I’ll bring a book,” she gave in. In jeans and a tank top, Emma walked with the group down to the creek with the book she was thankful she’d shoved into her dufflebag last minute. She was surprised when Killian took off his shirt and revealed a medium-sized black band wrapped around the bicep of his left arm.

“What’s that about?” she asked him, making herself comfortable on the sandy shore.

“Tattoo, but I never got it finished.”

“Why are you covering it up?” she pressed.

“Because everyone will have to wait to see the final product,” he said.

“Is it a mermaid?”

“What? No.”

“Unicorn?”

“Very funny.”

“Ex-girlfriend’s name?” she teased. He smirked at her and lifted his right arm to reveal a small, neat ‘Milah’ in script, no bigger than two inches long.

“Been there, done that, Swan. I don’t regret it necessarily, but I also don’t recommend getting other people’s names tattooed on your body. It gets confusing. If I ever get amnesia, I’ll find it and might think my name is Milah, too,” he joked and plopped down next to her. It was strange still being fully clothed while everyone you hung out with on a daily basis, including the boy next to you, was half-naked, all unblemished skin,  _normal_  scars, and so forth. “Are you sure you don’t want to swim?” he asked.

“What?” Emma looked at him and saw the optimistic look in his eyes, but didn’t know that the hopefulness had more to do with him wanting to make sure she didn’t have anything self-inflicted hiding somewhere on her. “No! I’m alright, seriously. Go have fun. I don’t like the water and I’m going to get to read one of my five million books for once.” It wasn’t a lie, she was excited to actually crack one open. She hadn’t wanted to in a long time and now she had the best opportunity to relax, sit back, and lose herself in her reading—and not in her head where the spiteful mocking over her marred skin continued.

Soon Killian did join the others, leaving Emma on the beach and though happily content with a good book, she was alone; ‘hindered’ by her urges to hurt herself.

Though she was now officially 12 days clean. So  _older_  urges.

* * *

 

The next day was pretty much the same. They all dragged themselves out of their tents and made breakfast, savoring the cool air until the afternoon heat wave seeped through the air. Dorothy took her shower, Victor cracked his jokes, Mary Margaret and David cuddled like the poster children for a camping catalogue. The others were busy in their tents changing into swim suits and everyone headed down to the water, back up for lunch, and then down again until dusk. They mainly survived on hotdogs the night before, but tonight David, having finally figured out the grill, cooked up burgers. Killian discovered Emma was a pickle thief.

Their third day camping, she set up her spot on the beach, a comfortable dent forming where she always sat down and dug her toes in. She brought along a few beers, chips, and her book, now all ready at her side. Today she wore thin leggings and a loose tank top, the smothering heat just too oppressive for jeans now. But unlike yesterday, most of the group, hungry for civilization in any form, crammed into the air-conditioned car mid-afternoon to take a trip to the closest grocery store to stock back up on food for their last night camping.

Anna sunbathed along the edge of the shadows which Elsa lay underneath beside her; two opposite sisters, but bonded all the same. Killian stayed behind, too, floating on his back in the creek and glancing over at Emma from the water. Today, he was determined to get her to at least fold up her leggings and walk around in it. She couldn’t do that though because although cut and scratch free for almost two weeks, her previous wounds had been deep, even the ones near her ankles. They were all darkened skin, some still a little pink around the edges. The lines pressed into her pale legs didn’t seem to want to fade any time soon.

Killian emerged from the water and Emma, re-reading the same sentence a few times over trying not to focus on the very wet Killian approaching her, let him wordlessly sit down by her. He smiled mischievously, leaned against her with his wet arm and shook his head, sending droplets of water spraying into her face and open book.

“Hey!”

“What would you do if I made you walk in the water right now?” he asked, still smiling, a secret plan forming behind that grin.

“I’d tell you that my leggings are too tight to fold up,” she lied, “so they’d end up soaked.”

“The sun will dry them off as soon as we get out and we still have a fair amount of it left in the sky.”

“I don’t know…” she trailed off, the water had been so tempting the last two days of listening to everyone play in it, but she had to keep up appearances.

“Come on, please?”

“I don’t like water.”

“Please, please, please, please, please,” he repeated, shaking his head like a dog again and spraying her with more water.

“Alright! I’ll put my feet in.”

“Yes,” he cheered, getting up on his feet and offering his hand. He pulled her up and they walked down to the edge of the creek.

It felt  _amazing_. The cool water completely soothed her feet, the sand was so soft and pliant underneath them, and she looked at the expanse of water in front of her with so much longing.

“Now, what would you do if I threw you in?”

“What?!” she shrieked. “No, no, no,” she cried out as he picked her up. “Killian, seriously, don’t you dare throw me.”

He paused, already thigh deep carrying Emma in his arms, her own encircling around his neck and body curling like a cat as if to pull herself as far up and away from the surface as possible. “Okay. I won’t  _throw_ you in.” Instead, he steadily walked forward into the water still holding her securely which was worse because at least throwing her in meant the clash of hot skin to cool water would be instantaneous, shocking but quick. This though, he held her close and walked deeper into the creek and she sank slowly inch by inch into the depths, yelping as it got colder. Eventually he just dumped her once the water was deep enough and laughed.

“Oh, you’re going to get it, buddy,” she threatened. She sent a violent splash of water at him while he was in the middle of saying something smart. He coughed and wiped his assaulted eyes, and like children they sent waves of water at each other until Emma launched herself at him, dragging him under with her.

It was perfect and fun, but Killian’s worries about Emma grew. She looked plenty comfortable in the water.

* * *

 

As they dried off in the sun, Elsa and Anna now back at the camp, Emma laughed, “I needed that.” She popped the cap off a beer and handed it to him, opening one up for herself after.

“I needed this whole trip. It couldn’t have come at a better time. It’s a way better alternative than a funeral.”

“I think it was, too. I don’t think you’ll regret not going.”

“Me neither. He was dead to me. I think I was just mad that I never got to tell him that. Maybe throw a punch in for old time’s sake.” He took a swig and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I much prefer this right now.”

“To better alternatives,” Emma toasted, clinking her bottle against his.

“To much better alternatives,” he agreed.

When they made their way back up to the campsite, Elsa was napping in their tent while Anna excitedly told Killian some ideas for the club. She was a peppy little work-horse. Emma gathered up some clothes, a towel, and her shower bag. She had sand caked against her skin everywhere and didn’t blame Dorothy for wanting a quick rinse after swimming anymore.

She hiked over to the bathroom and tossed all her stuff on the bench then stood by the side of the shower, out of the spray, and pushed the button sending a minute long stream of water down at the tiles. She pressed it about three times until the water warmed and went back to grab her things.

Today was a good day. She’d found a way to live her life despite her scars though they still held her back. She was proud of herself and tried to be more optimistic about abstaining from cutting, but she still held onto the fear that one of these days it would all sneak back up on her and suddenly she’d just lose it and start adding fresh ones again. If life had taught Emma anything, it was that you had to be prepared for all situations and this one of relapsing had a very high chance of reoccurring. She’d done it for so long, it would be a miracle if she stopped all together now. Progress was all about two steps forward, one step back, right? When would she have to take that step back?

Fifteen annoying pushes of the shower button later, she toweled off and grabbed her bra hanging over the shower curtain rod, fastened it, and looked for the rest of her clothes. She had a pair of jeans hanging over the curtain, but no matter which way she pushed it, it didn’t reveal her missing shirt or underwear. She peeked out from the curtain and saw the bundle still hanging off the side of the bench, soaking up the sun in the roofless bathroom area.

“Son of a bitch,” she groaned. It must’ve slipped from the bundle and now the cotton of her underwear and shirt were going to be burning hot from practically baking there. She regretted those extra minutes wasted of just standing in the water. This heat was ridiculous, thank god they were going back tomorrow.

She thought for a second and ruled that it was impossible that everyone was back from the trip to the market already, but she quickly listened from the shower for footsteps or shuffling out there before wrapping her towel around her torso and slipping on her little flipflops with the ducklings on them that waited just outside the stall.

The wet scrunch and flops of her shoes were the only sound filling the bathroom enclosure.

Until she heard a gasp. Her heart seized in her chest and the color drained from her face because there she was, standing out there in the open, naked with only a towel that stopped mid-thigh.

“Emma…”

She didn’t even have to fully look over to know that the gasp belonged to the girl standing in front of the mirror a few yards away, the perfect vantage point to see the full history of Emma’s shredded legs, all the pink skin that once lay under scabs and all the pigmented scars showcasing exactly which ones were the deepest, which were the angriest and most desperate by the darkness of their trails.

She had been too hasty and careless jumping out of that stall. She hadn’t been alone at all. Elsa had been standing there the whole time, quietly braiding her light hair into a fishtail.

 


	6. It's Been Awhile

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Major trigger warnings: self-harm, depression, horrible thoughts. Remember to take care of yourselves and please read the note at the end of the chapter, it's really important. Thanks, loves!

“Emma, what—” Elsa paused as Ana called from around the corner of the tall wooden fence shielding the bathroom and Emma’s secret from view.

Elsa didn’t think it possible, but the fear in Emma’s jade eyes managed to grow even wilder with panic, like an animal being hunted and sensing its end. She jumped back into the shower stall with her missing clothes and pulled the curtain shut, the rusted metal of the hooks shrieking along the rod doing nothing to help her nerves. The anticipation of Elsa’s answer to Ana’s question (‘Hey, everything okay? You were taking a long time, so I thought I’d come check and see if…” the girl had rambled) made Emma feel like her heart was being solidly thrown against the inside of her chest over and over again.

Emma waited for Elsa’s answer. Would she tell? How could she not, she thought, with all the horror she’d just seen? Those scars were strewn across Emma’s pale legs, absolutely littered in scratches and lines of all intensities, fading, and severity. It totally  _looked_  like she’d been at it for a long time which, of course, she had been. This made it all the more mortifying—there was no denying they were intentional and no denying that she hadn’t been a slave to this addiction for a little more than a year.

“Emma was…” Elsa began. “Emma—”

Was this it? Her heart seized tightly.

“…is still in the shower. I’m just waiting for her,” said Elsa coolly. “We’ll be down in a little bit.”

Emma snapped her eyes shut and clamped a hand over her mouth, smothering the sound of her relief. She was safe. Well, sort of. Contending with Elsa about her legs still awaited her outside the shower, but at least Anna wouldn’t be an issue…

‘ _Yet_ ,’ she thought grimly.

A minute passed after Anna’s footsteps retreated down the gravel path, and still she hadn’t moved inside the stall. Clutching her clothes tightly, she stood there, naked, save for her towel and bra, with drenched hair dripping trails of water down her neck and back. She felt uncomfortable and vulnerable, but she was afraid to shift a millimeter in any direction, like staying still might somehow put a pause on this whole catastrophe or at least buy her time in which Elsa would forget everything she saw.

But Elsa must’ve grown impatient because she gave an order, “Put on your clothes and come out. I’m not leaving.”

Emma didn’t bother to stifle her groan. Her back hit the shower tile, followed next by her head which let out a solid  _thump_  against the wall, too. Elsa could practically see the motion playing out behind that curtain and stressed in a softer voice, “Emma, it’s okay. I promise.” She moved to the bench across from the stall. “Just come out and talk to me. Make me understand.”

“ _I_  don’t even understand,” grumbled Emma. If she’d been living a nightmare before, this was pure hell. She ached for the days of feeling lonely in her secret versus this _—_ at the mercy of someone else’s judgment. The urge to vomit from the stress racking her body grew more violent by the second.

“Just think about it while you get changed then.”

“As opposed to what? Wondering what color to paint my nails next?” drawled Emma dryly.

“How about a light blue?” joked Elsa, trying to make Emma, basically trapped in the shower stall, feel more at ease. Though Elsa wasn’t necessarily at ease herself. She didn’t know what the proper thing to say was, or what she was supposed to do about Emma’s… ‘condition.’ Elsa mostly needed her to come out and show her those marked legs again to confirm that she hadn’t imagined the whole thing in the first place. She hoped the words would come out when Emma finally did, too.

Emma wiped off her wet shoulders, roughly toweling her legs in resentment, and put on her clothes. The curtain pulled back and she, without tearing her eyes from the dusty concrete floor, stepped out, sliding her duckling flip flops back on and stood there, unsure whether to just turn and bolt in the other direction. If she did, Elsa would definitely tell though. At least this way she could plead her case to the girl and beg for compassion, understanding, or some sort of mercy.

Her fingers were trembling. She took slow steps toward Elsa, and sat down on the bench with a good amount of space between them. They sat in silence, Elsa looking over Emma’s now clothed legs as if she were truly seeing them for the first time—a cover, a distraction, a ruse. Emma stared at the floor, wondering what that hardness would feel like if she were plummeting towards it from a mile up in the air. She felt her stomach churning as if she actually were free-falling to her demise.

They both waited for the other to make a move, and after the nausea became unbearable, Emma spoke with a quaking voice, “Who’s first to find out?”

Her hands clenched into fists on her lap, hard, curved nails digging excruciatingly into her palms. (Pain was familiar after all, and under Elsa’s examination, this small act was all she could afford.)

“Ana?” Emma suggested bitterly. “Ruby?”  _Killian_ , the name died on her tongue.  _No_ , Killian couldn’t find out. He couldn’t know how twisted she was, how comfortable she was drawing out her own blood, inflicting and enduring this pain she brought on herself like some animal. He’d look at her like she was a deranged, disgusting, monstrous thing… She felt like a deranged, disgusting, monstrous thing sitting there. A monster costumed to look normal. A vile thing in leggings and a tank top that ironically said, ‘Eat. Sleep. Repeat.’

“What?” asked Elsa. “Emma, I’m not going to tell anyone,” she said. “But you’ve got to talk to me about it first. Okay?”

“Like I have a choice,” muttered Emma.

* * *

 

They’d been there for half an hour, Emma struggling to construct responses to even the simplest of Elsa’s questions.

They’d moved to a bench beyond the second corner of the U-shaped bathroom. Tucked in a shaded spot on one of the neglected benches, Emma sat with her back to the corner, one foot planted on the concrete, her other leg bare, leggings rolled up to her knee, and scarred calf laying across Elsa’s lap. Emma chipped away at the peeling paint of the dark green bench while Elsa held her leg as gentle as she would when she was a little girl, nursing Anna’s bumps and bruises.

“So, a year, huh?”

“Yeah. A year.”

“And you started because…?”

“Because I scratched myself with my nails so hard the skin tore and thought, ‘ _There has to be a more efficient way than this_ ,’” she finished darkly. Elsa grew quiet again and Emma peered over at the pale blonde tracing the lines on her leg with her eyes. “I don’t—I mean, I haven’t in a long time—well,” she huffed in frustration. “It feels like a long time. I guess it hasn’t been that long really, but—but it is… to me, at least. I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m trying to say.”

“It’s like an addiction, Emma. It’s a coping mechanism. They’re harder to stop than most people think,” said Elsa who shook her head.

“How do  _you_  know that?” sneered Emma. “Pamphlets?” She ripped off a piece of splintered wood from the bench and looked up just in time to see a flicker of hurt cross Elsa’s face. But in a second, it was replaced by something cooler, chillier, and guarded. ‘ _Hurting yourself, hurting your friends_ ,’ whispered the little demon in Emma’s head. ‘ _You don’t deserve them. Not someone like you_.’ She tested and pressed her thumb against the sharp new wooden piece sticking out of the bench.

“Things I’ve read, I suppose,” said Elsa calmly, she wouldn’t hold anything against Emma. She knew how hard it was to come to terms with her own anxiety before, and at least she had help. She knew Emma was alone in this. “Online. Some in the Psych Services building, like you said. Class. Oh, and therapy,” she said. “I speak from personal experiences. I have an anxiety disorder. Panic attacks, you can say, are my specialty—and those attacks are how my body ‘copes’ with things. I know how hard it is because I’ve had to do a lot of work to rewire my brain into not sending my body into chaos when things feel wrong.”

Emma felt guilty and horrible about snapping. For the last thirty minutes, Elsa had been nothing but patient. “When… When was your last attack?” she asked, trying to move on.

“When was yours?”

“A couple weeks ago,” said Emma truthfully. “I don’t know why I stopped. I just did and kept going with it.”

“A couple days ago for me. I thought I’d missed the deadline for the exhibit I’ve been working towards for the last year and a half. I didn’t, by the way, but my head decided to send me into a flurry of panic before I even thought to just breathe and straighten it all out to get the facts right.”

“Glad you didn’t miss it. Your art is really great…”

“Thanks.” Elsa lifted her hand and pointed over to a particularly dark and thick line in Emma’s skin. “Do you remember each of them?”

“I remember some. Sometimes I do more than one. Scratches. Cuts are usually shallow. Slowly or all pissed off and at once. It just depends. Ugly, aren’t they?”

“They’re not  _ugly_. They just hurt to look at.”

“How is that not ‘ugly’?” snorted Emma.

“Because these aren’t  _gross_. They’re scars—okay, maybe they’d be a little cringe-worthy if they weren’t healed up like they are now, but that’s just me. I don’t have a strong stomach. No, it’s just that it makes me think about how upset I’d have to be to actually make a mark like that on myself, too.”

“I’d say you’d have to be pretty fucked up in the head,” she grimaced.

“Or, really in pain.”

“I—I know you already said you wouldn’t. But, really, Elsa, no one can know about this. Not Anna or Kristoff, especially not David… and definitely not Killian. Don’t tell him and I promise I won’t do it anymore. Really, I promise.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t told Killian. You two are inseparable.”

“I just don’t want to mess things up… I like hanging out with him.”

Elsa whipped her head at Emma. “Oh, come on. You’re joking. For all of us, Emma, there’s nothing that would change how we care about you.”

Emma stared back, serious as ever and unconvinced.

“And you’re not giving Killian enough credit. You could sprout a new head and he wouldn’t be any less in love with you than he is now.”

Emma tucked her head down, but the redness creeping over her face, neck, and chest could not be hidden. “Elsa, stop.”

“You know it’s true. But, I’m not going to play love counselor right now. Right now, it’s about you—and making sure that this,” she waved at Emma’s bared leg, “doesn’t happen again.”

“It won’t.”

Elsa gave her a knowing smile. She knew what it was like to be in Emma’s position; she lived it herself. Hope was all they had, so instead of spouting out possibilities of the defeat or relapse she knew all too well, she simply smiled, patted Emma’s leg, and said, “Good. Still,” she continued, “I think you should think about going to see the school counselor when we get back. They’re trained to deal with this sort of thing.”

Emma agreed to speak more about it all to Elsa later. If they stayed in the bathroom any longer, surely someone would get suspicious. But at the least, she no longer felt like she was going to vomit the BLT Mary Margaret made her earlier. She had support from a friend who wasn’t going to out her, but wasn’t going to brush it under the rug either. After they’d left the bathroom, making their way down the trail, she groaned in embarrassment when Elsa teased, “You’re kind of fuzzy-legged aren’t you.”

“It’s not like I wear sundresses all the time,” said Emma who playfully whacked at Elsa, tripping a little in the process of making sure her leggings were all the way back down and concealing everything underneath.

“You could always say you’re protesting the double standard on gender and hair removal, so there’s that.”

“Can we please talk about something else? I prefer the scars to my leg hair.”

Killian and Anna were lounging around the fire they’d built, Anna chattering away about something Killian was doing his best to pay attention to. His face lit up when he heard Emma’s voice growing louder from behind the wall of tents on their site.

“Get lost on your way back, darlings?”

Elsa looked to Emma, clearly unprepared for a cover story.

“Took down a bear with our bare hands and teeth on the way over. No biggie,” joked Emma with practiced ease. Suddenly everything Emma said and did had more weight to it. Elsa tried not to gawk at her because now, with everything she knew, she didn’t see it as Emma just making a joke—she saw it as someone who was a professional at deflecting and keeping her secrets safe. Elsa began re-evaluating all the one-liners Emma came up with in their class together in the past and wondered how many of them were meant to cover up her private life.

Neither of them made any attempt to excuse their late arrival and Killian tilted his head as he regarded Elsa. Unlike her, he already had experience in detecting ulterior motives to Emma’s humor, and Elsa, all wide eyes and tongue-tied, confirmed his suspicions. But what could he do about it? He knew Elsa would never betray Emma, not without good reason, and his concern would no doubt be taken as nosiness. Once again, he was helpless to do anything about all of Emma’s little mysteries and would have to bury the desire to uncover them, no matter how curious the look on Elsa’s face was.

* * *

 

It was dark all around them, the insects were alive in the night as the creek bubbled and lapped away in the distance. They all gathered around the fire, so thriving and bright that it made the stars nearly impossible to see. Killian lounged next to Emma and endured Ruby’s teasing about him modeling in the firelight.

“Are you really comfortable lying like that, Jones, or are you just trying to look pretty?”

“No trying needed, sweetheart. All natural talent,” he replied cheekily.

“All natural ego, too,” said Emma, slowly turning her marshmellow in the indirect heat of the embers.

Killian shot her a look of scandal, but it was lost on her as she pulled back the perfectly golden puff on the end of her stick away from the heat and began assembling the graham crackers and chocolate pieces in her lap. Killian struck as slinky as a snake, sinking his teeth into the marshmellow puff and biting off half of her painstaking work.

“You son of a—” she gasped, “—No! Not my chocolate, too!” She smacked his hand away. After sending one last glare at him, she pulled off the remaining marshmellow and squished the remnants into her chocolate-graham cracker sandwich.

She plucked another puff from the bag and impaled it on her marshmellow stick then shoved it in his hand. “You owe me a marshmellow,” she demanded. “And do it the right way, bud. None of that burnt, black charcoal bullshit you were pulling earlier.”

“But it takes so  _long_ ,” whined Killian.

“Exactly. So get going,” she said sternly.

He sat up and propped the stick on top of one of the rocks around the fire ring. With one last ‘woe-is-me’ sigh, he maneuvered the end of the stick right near the mild embers off to the side of the blazing fire just like she had done for the last ten minutes and pouted, hoping she would steal the stick back, criticize that he wasn’t roasting it properly, or simply take pity on him. But she just raised an eyebrow and gave him a hard look. Emma Swan did not play when it came to food.

Elsa and Anna watched the two from across the fire; they observed their silent conversation of gestures and challenging facial expressions. Elsa now understood why all this time she kept the boy at a distance, afraid of uncovering her scars and history just as she had been terrified earlier when Elsa had discovered them. But Killian  _adored_  her, and according to Anna, she’d never seen him so taken by anyone before. When he spoke of her, whenever a conversation about her sprang up, he showed that same enthusiasm and brightened face as he did when he talked about his brother, Liam. Emma had become one of the major people in his life, and as clear as it was that Emma enjoyed his company, too, there was one wall that kept her separated from him and everyone else. It was the one thing that couldn’t be compromised.

Until now. Elsa stared at Emma’s legging-clad thighs, unable to stop herself from imagining where that set of particularly three deep, parallel lines sat underneath.

David cleared his throat and toasted, “To a happy Spring Break and successful camping trip. May midterms not steal our youth and crush our spirits when we get back.”

“Here, here,” Victor said, raising his beer up with everyone else.

“How is everyone doing right now?” engaged Mary Margaret. Leave it to her to bring up school during vacation, Emma thought.

“Art is the only thing that makes sense to me anymore,” volunteered Elsa.

“I have straight B’s in everything except English—which is at an A!” said Anna cheerfully. “Can’t complain at all, it’s better than some of my other semesters.”

“I have no clue,” snorted Dorothy. “I think I’m passing though.”

“I hear that,” said Emma, clinking her beer bottle to Dorothy’s.

“Emma!” exclaimed David.

“What? I’ve been turning stuff in. I have a good feeling I’m passing, I’ve just been distracted.” That was one word for it. ‘Floundering’ in the early months would be a bit more accurate.

“You’re working too much,” he said disapprovingly. “You need to cut back.”

“Work makes more sense than school sometimes though.” That earned her a murmur of agreement across the fire.

“Same. I’d rather do a double-shift and get paid than stay awake through my useless Communications class,” said Dorothy. “I mean, I get it—when someone doesn’t say a whole lot, it means they’re not into the conversation. Like, did I need to read an  _entire_  chapter and take an  _entire_  class for that piece of information? It’s such bullshit.”

“Watch out, Ruby. I think your girlfriend’s my soulmate,” laughed Emma. (Ruby, tipsy and whispering louder than she was aware of, brought her lips to Dorothy’s ear and said, “Funny, I thought Killian already had the job.” Dorothy hushed her and Killian tensed, wondering if Emma had caught it, too.)

“You need to check in with your teachers,” David scolded Emma. If she had, she was immediately distracted by David being a hard-ass.

“It’s good to know where you stand,” Mary Margaret offered. “And they’ll consider you a good student, concerned about your grades and such.”

“Yeah, it’s good to know where you stand,” snickered Kristoff, rolling his eyes and setting Victor up to finish with, “So you can prepare your funeral arrangements once you found out you’re standing in academic death row.”

Everyone laughed, including Emma who then took the last swig of her third beer and was definitely feeling a fuzziness around her mind.

She was fine though, school-wise, life-wise. She’d be fine. The last month had been a good month. She’d turned everything in and was right on track.

Nothing could go wrong. And if it did, she just needed to breathe, deal with it, and handle it.  _She could do it, she could do it, she could do it, she could do it…._ she told herself in her newfound positivity.

* * *

 

Emma and Killian were the last at the fire. Everyone had disappeared into their tents, but Killian and Emma, now officially the drunkest of them all, remained on the reclining outdoor loungers, fire smoldering lowly and allowing them to finally see the night sky ablaze with stars and misty, silvery clouds and clusters making up the line of the Milky Way drawn above them. It was like a scar across the sky.

Their random nonsense filled the silence hanging in the trees surrounding them. Everything from mythical monsters versus fantastical creatures in fights to stories about their childhoods. About him sailing sinking rafts gone wrong or her collection of stuffed animals from fifty cent claw machines that made all the other foster children so envious. Some jealous, as they stole them away.

But now, nearing three in the morning with everyone fast asleep in their tents around them, they laid searching the sky for falling stars. There was a faint one near the edge of the Milky Way that was gone before she could direct him where to look. Then their eyes lit up with the glimmering trail of a star burning almost blindingly in the darkness. They both gasped.

“Did you see that one?”

“That was a big one,” he said excitedly. They could still see the impression of its trail of light in the dark dome around them.

“Man, why can’t we see this back on campus?” she asked.

“Because we’d never do any work. We’d just drink beer and look at the stars all night long.”

“Not a bad way to live.”

“Not a bad way to live at all. The weather wasn’t very bad where I grew up,” said Killian. “But we were on the coast, so except when the fog rolled in at night, it looked something like this all the time.”

“What?! Seriously, that’s amazing. God, you were spoiled.”

“It  _did_  spoil me. There’s nothing like this. I mean, it wasn’t as clear as now because  _this_  is pretty ridiculous with how bright it is. Still, it was nice to know they were there all the time. Hard to explain.”

“It’s comforting. I get it,” she empathized. “Back on campus, I forget how pretty something like this can be and how it makes me feel. I hate it when I get lost in my own head and I forget to look around me. Worse when I finally do and it’s like I don’t feel how beautiful anything is anymore… Y’know?”

“For someone who’s always ready with a joke, you’re rather introspective.”

“Deep and mysterious,” she said in a lowered, teasing tone.

“I’m serious, you’ve an amazing mind underneath all that hair.”

“Always making fun of my hair.”

“It’s like you step into my room and in one minute, every surface is covered with blonde strands. You shed like a cat.”

“You’re really starting to  _get in my hair_ ,” she joked horribly.

“Well, with it clinging to all my stuff, I definitely can’t get out of it,” he retorted.

Maybe it was the booze letting his curiosity run wild, but he couldn’t help prying at least a little bit about their earlier absence.

“Is Elsa alright?” he asked smoothly.

“Yeah, why?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged in his seat. “She just seemed a little quiet earlier. Just making sure everything was okay.”

“Always the counselor. But, I think she’s fine.”

“Hm…”

“ _Hm_ , what?”

“Nothing. It’s just…” He kept going, it was worse than drunken word vomit because this had a motive—which meant no tact to his efforts. “She seemed nervous about something. Was she?”

“Oh…” Emma flashed to her moment with Elsa in the bathroom, over the conversation she’d had with the girl and the promise Elsa had made not to tell anyone. She gulped. “I didn’t notice anything,” lied Emma.

Suddenly she felt apprehensive, her predicament with Elsa clouding her eyes from the beauty of the stars above her once more. Any perspective the stars had given her was now replaced by only about three feet of future in front of her. That’s what she called it, ‘Three Feet of Future.’ It referred to the three feet of concrete she could see in front of her when she couldn’t bear to drag her eyes up from the kick of her feet on the floor as she walked from room to room in the endless trek that was her life. Three feet was all the future she could handle. And this day, with all the drama around her self-harming and Elsa finding out, was now officially too much for her to handle; she was ready to end it.

“I’m tired,” she said abruptly. “You should get some rest, too, unless you plan on letting someone else drive back tomorrow.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Killian sighed in defeat. He’d managed to put an end to their last night, and without any more information than before. He walked her the full eight feet to her tent.

“Thank you, Sir Jones, for escorting me home.”

“Well, Lady Swan, you never know when that bear you took down with your ‘bare hands and teeth’ might come back for revenge. G’night, Swan.”

“See you in the morning.” She didn’t linger, giving him a quick wave from behind the mesh screen. She zipped the cover back up and changed, listening to him reduce the fire to smoking ash with the jug of water next to the pit before fumbling back to his own tent shared with Victor.

As she lay there next to Elsa’s steady breathing, surrounded by the crickets chirping away in the night, her face fell with the saddening reality that this moment was over, their trip was over. There would be no more Killian splashing her in the creek, or Dorothy and Ruby sneaking off on private hikes, or Elsa drawing on the boulders around their site with charcoal pieces from the campfire, or Mary Margaret cooking a backup breakfast for everyone on the hotplate while David struggled with the grill as always, or Anna, Kristoff, and Victor somehow finding a way to play three-person checkers. There wouldn’t be nights delightfully drowning in the starlight above, trying to scan every inch of the sky at once so they wouldn’t miss a single shooting star. It was over, they were going back tomorrow and she had nowhere to go for the rest of her break except to work and her little room.

Luckily, she did have Killian there to help the transition. He wasn’t going to visit his aunt and uncle, the only family he had on this side of the world, and his job in the school student store was on halt until the holiday break was over. So, she had him at her full beck and call which he looked forward to, especially with Kristoff, Anna, and Elsa off with their families.

The two resumed their routine of going out to the café—then one time revisiting the wine bar, followed by the next night at a proper bar. They hung out at the drop-off at sunsets (neither ready to stay up until dawn again), played video games and movies, and simply wasting time in wonderful ways. By the following Monday when school started up again, Emma felt even more wistful for her Spring Break adventures. Especially when she’d gotten the first bit of bad news from her classes.

“What do you mean I’m  _failing_? I just got an A on my last essay!” She waved the blue-inked ‘A’ paper in front of the teacher.

“I’m sorry, Emma, but it’s all right here in the log—you got a D+ on the first exam, a D on the second, an F on the third—”

“But what if I keep getting A’s on everything else from now on, can I at least bring it up to a passing grade?”

“Emma, you didn’t turn in  _any_  of the assignments from February, sparsely through March, and didn’t participate in the three group presentations from January. Your attendance isn’t up to par either.”

“I’ve—I’ve been stressed and I didn’t recover over Winter break, and Spring semester just hit me hard. Please, there’s gotta be extra credit or something.”

“You missed about two months’ worth of work in a four and a half month semester. Your performance is less than satisfactory. Really, I’m sorry you’re having a tough time, but if you had come to me back in January or February about your stress, we could’ve worked something out then.”

Emma stared at her dumbfounded, but her other teachers weren’t nearly as nice as this one had been.

“This is what happens when people slack off in class,” one said as if Emma were wasting her time.

“Studying and reading the material is the only way to pass the quizzes each week, I told the class this more than once over the semester,” another had stated after Emma had explained her inability to comprehend any of the reading, not because it was particularly impossible or difficult, but because she just couldn’t wrap her mind around anything that wasn’t food orders at the diner. “If you get full points on everything from now on, your percentage  _might_  qualify you for a D at the end of term. It depends on the grading curve in class.”

The last had flat out told her there was no point in coming to class anymore and had been wondering all this time when she’d finally realize it.

Emma was in trouble, with only the slim possibility of passing two of her classes with D’s.

In only two days of meeting with her teachers, her whole academic world had been shattered. She was failing, she was a failure, and there was nothing she could do about it. The mere thought of how it was going to affect her future there sent her headfirst into a panic, but she couldn’t think of that because she was working double shifts to cover for a girl who was in the hospital with a nasty virus. But why even work when she was failing anyway? Why work when all she was doing was paying the school for the chance to fail her classes? What was the point in someone like her, a big fuck up bothering to eat or pay for a music subscription full of playlists meant to study to when she was  _failing everything_. She was in shit. In deep, deep shit.

 _‘Told ya, you couldn’t handle it,’_  the voice in her head betrayed her.

* * *

 

Killian called. She didn’t know why she answered.

“It’s been days since I’ve seen your lovely face. I know it’s crazy with the added hours this week, but you’ve got to eat sometime, right?”

“I’m not hungry, Killian.”

“You’re  _always_  hungry—”

“I’m tired. I really just need to sleep. Talk to you later,” she said and hung up without waiting for his reply.

She didn’t go to meetings despite it now being one month away from May, Mental Health Awareness month and the big march. She didn’t see anyone, not even Anna who had a similar path to all her classes for the simple reason that she wasn’t bothering to go to them anymore. What was the point? What was the point of anything.

She felt like an outcast when she had to leave her room. An outsider. A failure of a student living on campus, not going to classes, and just racing around in her own frantic dizziness to try and run away from what she had to do which was confront it. She needed to face the consequences of her actions at the institution, but instead, she distracted herself with work. She was running off of five hours of restless sleep, heart palpitations, and nightmares, but soon she ran face to face with the unavoidable consequences at work, too.

You’d think that running double shifts for three days would buy her some leeway there, but  _no_. The manager had it out for her ever since she’d first snapped on the same customer that had indecent things to say about her physique that day.

“It’s sexual harassment!” she yelled at her boss.

“It’s lashing out on a customer, Emma. We can’t have staff screaming at customers in front of  _other_  customers. You should’ve called me over, you should’ve talked to me and  _I_  could’ve handled it. But you  _threw a drink_  in his face—”

“This isn’t right.  _I’m_  the victim. Sure, maybe I didn’t handle it the right way, but—”

“Exactly, Emma. You didn’t handle it the right way.”

She couldn’t handle  _anything_  the right way.

“And, to be honest, your termination isn’t just about this. You’re late for work, there have been times when you’ve left earlier than your shift ended—” (She remembered that. She was panicking and had to get out of there and to the safety of her room and back to the unsafety of her razor blades.) “—you’ve mixed up orders, dropped more plates than I can count now. And I know about the mixed up drinks, we  _cannot_  serve alcohol to minors. We can lose our license and be fined, even over a mistake, and not every family that comes in here laughs it off. They  _do_  complain. Emma, I’m not doing this to be cruel. For the last six months, you’ve seemed tired of coming in and being here. I think you need to take some time to yourself. For your own health.”

“I can’t  _afford_  health without a job,” she seethed.

“I’m sorry, Emma, but it’s not working out here.”

She’d done great work in the beginning; employee of the month material, so she expected maybe a, ‘You could always apply again in the future,’ but she didn’t get that. Instead, she got what she dreaded most.

Pity on her boss’s face.

* * *

 

 _‘I’m not going to lie, I’m worried about you. You don’t sound yourself. What’s going on, Swan?’_  Killian’s text said, but Emma wouldn’t know because she had her phone on silent and buried in her bag. She had no intention of digging it out right now. She didn’t want connection to the world outside when she could barely deal with the world inside her room, everything shattering inside  _her_.

Because right now she felt hypersensitive to everything, frail and helpless. She’d forgotten what it felt like to be this miserable, to feel this much desolation, to feel her chest clamped tight, pushing on her throbbing heart while her lungs collapsed after each heave and cry and whimper. This pain racking her head, the anger jolting down to her fingertips, the toe-curling despair making her wrap her arms around her body and curl up into the smallest possible form she could manage—it felt worse than anything she’d ever felt before… Because she knew what happiness felt like now.

She knew what it felt like to have nothing go wrong ever in your life because you had friends, because your hard work produced satisfying results, because you woke up alert and  _open_  to new experiences in a new day.

But the decay she felt inside her right now—like Darkness itself was slicing up the grooves of her mind, tipping the scales of her sanity, and rotting her heart out— _this_  was the worst she’d ever felt and it wasn’t going away. Days passed and It. Still. Wouldn’t. Go. Away…

But she knew how it could.

She uncurled herself and scooted to the edge of her bed. Inside her drawer were all her instruments, inside her drawer could be her salvation—

And,  _Fuck. It._ She was tired of denying herself the only thing that could make her feel worse about her body but better about everything else, even if just for a moment. She jerked open the drawer with livid force, hating herself for having stopped so long because what had been the fucking point of it all? All that work to stay away, all that self-loathing about her scars holding her back from being the new person she was—she grabbed the industrial safety pin, a spare from work and pried it open with effort—she wasn’t  _new_ , she was nobody. She wasn’t tough, strong, and resistant like the metal in her hand.

The pin felt so cold, unused, and abandoned, but she would change that.

She kicked and kicked until her pants were off and gripped the needle point facing down, as if ready to stab something, and with tears still streaming down her face in stinging rivers, hair matted to her cheeks, bottom lip trembling with hatred, she lowered it to her bared thigh and—

_Slash._

Nope, she wasn’t  _new_. She was the same old failure, even more pathetic now.

She brought the point back across the opposite way.

 _Slash_.

Her work at school was done.

_Slash._

She was jobless and useless.

_Drag._

She couldn’t do anything right and no one would really care if she disappeared, if she cut off ties with everyone from then on out. They’d be better off without her anyway, even if they didn’t realize it right away. There was nothing good about her, she was a sore. An infectious, festering human piece of garbage.

_Rip._

She was a fucking freak. A fucking screw-up. David, Killian, Elsa—they didn’t need her pulling them down. She shouldn’t exist, she was on borrowed time, she should’ve been done for a long time ago, she couldn’t handle it, she couldn’t handle it, she couldn’t handle it…

* * *

 

Three days after being fired and humiliated at her old job, she lay in a heap on her bed. Her legs were scratched raw, but not them alone. Her arms, never a target of her desperation, were covered with pinpricks of dried, beaded red. The lines crisscrossed and ran up her forearm, along her bicep, and over her shoulder. There were even a few throbbing, puffed up lines along the side of her stomach. She was running out of room and felt tempted to rip off her face when she caught a glimpse of the ugly mess she saw reflecting back on the screen of her phone.

She was a monster. A disgusting creature of self-pity and pathetic failure and she hated herself. She hated every inch of herself, inside and out. She was so out of control. Everything was dizzy, everything was crashing around her and now she was falling, too. There was no hope for her, no hope for her life. This entire last month of work was for what? To turn her F to an F+? To work at a shit diner with ghastly patrons, putting on a revolting smile on her face to pay for those F’s?

_What. Was. The. Point._

And she lay defeated for the rest of the night until dawn broke the horizon and she managed to peel herself from her sheets just to rip them off the bed, with their light, faint rust-colored smudges from her own handiwork of her skin, and drape them over her curtain rod to block out more of the light.

She simply existed for hours in darkness, it took so much effort now. The same script replayed in her head— _What is the point? You were always nothing, you’re nothing now, and you’ll always be nothing. Fuck school. Fuck work. Fuck your life. Your friends can fuck off, too. They’ll just judge you, pity you. ‘Oh, poor pathetic Emma. Can’t do what even the simplest of students can do. Can’t do what even the laziest of adults can do without blaming something else.’ Want to blame something? Blame yourself, waste of space. You can’t do it, you can’t do anything. You. Do._ Nothing. _Right…._

She cried until there was nothing left but the air from her shallow breaths. Emma laid face flat down into mattress, sheets stiff from the salt in her tears. The wounds on her arms, along the curves of her thighs and calves pressed into the scratchy sheet of her bed. Everything hurt on the outside, but everything inside… was disappearing.

She felt nothing. She felt like the dead shed skin of a snake. There was almost nothing inside her anymore. She cried it all out. She whimpered it in pleas to make everything stop. She forced it out in silent wheezes, mouth open wide in silent screams. She buried it under scratches and cuts in her flesh. There was nothing left but the curious beating of her heart, still going… still fighting like there was something still left to fight for. Because who could ever see potential in a helpless, pitiful wreck like her? She couldn’t.

A flicker of an idea lit up the blackened room and without more consideration, because thought required energy that she didn’t have for anything but pulling on some leggings over her screaming thighs and sliding her arms into a light jacket, she prepared to leave her room.

She left her drawer open. She left the light on. She left her keys. She left her phone, and left the door unlocked as she pulled it closed. She simply got up and left. Emma didn’t know what she was doing, knew whatever she was doing was reckless, leaving everything vulnerable like that, but she felt vulnerable herself. She didn’t care about anything, she just need to get out of the storm following her around, she had to do something other than lie there and contemplate the cons of her life, so she walked down the hall and into the black emptiness of the night.

* * *

 

Elsa was worried about Emma. Everyone was, though not everyone interfered.

“She’s probably just sick guys, leave her alone,” said Victor to the group. They were sitting around, solemn and concerned in the Psychological Services recreation room where they held their meetings.

“Yeah, like half my class was gone today because everyone’s got a cold,” said Dorothy. They turned their attention to the front of the room.

Elsa’s knee bounced up and down under the table, and the jittering, jerky movements transferred over to Killian who sat next to her. It was starting to make him want to fiddle with something himself.

“What’s going on, love? It feels like an earthquake coming from there.”

“Oh, nothing, sorry.” She stopped her bouncing.

Emma had skipped out on Art all week. Not to mention she had ignored Elsa’s calls, texts, and even the loud and obnoxious knocking on her dorm room door. She’d only answered when Elsa texted,  _‘You’re worrying me and if you don’t pick up your phone in the next hour I’m going to assume something’s wrong and you’re not handling it well…’_

‘Handling it well’ was obvious code for—are you marring your own body again? So she  _had_  to call her back.

(“I’m fine, Elsa,” Emma had said tiredly. She had tried to sound cheerful, but it sounded more like a shrilly croak.

(“You don’t sound fine,” replied Elsa. “So, what did your teachers say about your classes?”

(Emma was quiet for a moment then said, “Sorry. I can’t. I gotta go. I’m so tired from work,” she lied. “Bye.” She left Elsa with nothing but a dial tone yesterday, and Elsa was not convinced at all.)

She absentmindedly started bouncing her leg up and down again, now in addition to biting her nails, only a few minutes into Anna’s pep talk to the room full of people.

“Seriously, Elsa. What’s got you on edge?” whispered Killian.

“I don’t know,” she said honestly.

“What don’t you know about?” he asked. She bit at the skin around her nail particularly hard; so hard that she winced and Killian grasped her hand and pulled it away from her relentless teeth. “Elsa, you’re worrying me now, too.  _What_  is wrong?”

She couldn’t deal with it anymore and shot up from her seat, dragging Killian by the sleeve of his shirt with him. No one but Anna noticed them leave abruptly from the back of the room, but she continued speaking anyway.

“What’s up?” asked Killian seriously once in the hall.

“I have this really bad feeling that… Emma might not be okay right now.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because she didn’t answer me for days. I even went to her room and I  _know_  she was in there. And, well, I don’t think she got good news about her classes. She wouldn’t even talk to me on the phone long yesterday, and she only answered me because I—I…” Elsa trailed off. This would mean betraying Emma’s confidence to the one person she specifically stressed not to tell.

“Because…?”

“Can you keep a secret?” she asked hurriedly, as if trying to rush it all out before she could talk herself into hiding Emma’s secret again. She waited for him with unwavering eye contact, hand rubbing at her neck in self-comforting touches.

“Elsa, I’m not sure what—”

“Ugh!” she blurted, curling her hands and clutching her head like it was going to explode. “This is not helping  _my_  anxiety.”

“So Emma has anxiety?” Killian picked up perceptively.

“How much do you know about her?” she asked, ignoring his question.

“Like… Her childhood, or…”

“Like how she…  _deals_  with things. Does she ever talk to you about personal things?”

“Yes… But I’m not sure what you mean, Elsa,” sighed Killian in frustration that he couldn’t conceal. Elsa took Killian’s running out of patience (being the most patient person she knew) as a sign. Her patience had run out, too.

“I think Emma’s in trouble. With herself. She has this thing she does and—”

“Does she hurt herself?” asked Killian flat out. He remembered the drawer of tools all too well and his heart beat faster with the anticipation of finally uncovering perhaps Emma’s darkest secret of all.

“How… How did you know that?” Elsa said, wide-eyed and panicked that she might have betrayed her friend over something little and trivial; that she might’ve blown this all out of proportion and Emma was really just in her room trying to catch up on sleep from a crazy work schedule while she outed her to Killian.

Killian’s heart thudded forcefully in his chest. He knew the truth now. All these months and now he knew the truth, but it made him sick to his stomach to know that his friend—Emma, someone he cared so much about, could do this to herself. That she felt so hopeless, depressed, and downhearted that she could bring herself to do something like this. It made him miserable to think that she could be that miserable herself.

“But she hasn’t been!” said Elsa. “Not lately, at least.”

“How long has it been since she last?”

“A few weeks now,” she said hopefully. “But it’s the first time she’s intentionally tried to stop…”

“Yeah, she could relapse easily.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know these things,” said Killian matter-of-factly. Elsa assumed it was from his studies, just as Killian had intended for her to take it. “I’m going to check on her, okay? Don’t mention this to anyone else, alright? I don’t want rumors spreading because the wrong person—or Victor—overheard.”

“Of course,” Elsa said.

“Tell everyone I forgot to submit something tonight,” he said, going back into the room just to grab his bag and jacket before shooting off into the dimly lit hall toward Emma’s building.

* * *

 

“Emma?” Killian knocked on her door. He could see her light shining underneath it and wondered if she was on the other side, distraught and angry. He knocked again, called for her again then reached for the doorknob as if he could rattle it open, but to his surprise, it opened without resistance and he called once more, slowly opening the door.

Her room was lit, but the feeling of darkness overwhelmed the small space. Clothes lay around, kicked to the sides to open up a path on the floor just wide enough to shuffle through, and the sheet clumped up and stuffed behind the top of the curtain rod to cover her window and half of her desk below it gave the eerie feeling of someone trying to box themselves in. The pinpricks of rust-colored blood were too faint to see in the dim glow of the table lamp, but it shone brightly on the drawer, pulled wide open and its occupants reflecting brightly the light above. He didn’t have to guess that she’d been using them because an oversized safety pin and that same small knife with the pearly handle were set out on one side of the bed.

He dug out his phone and dialed her number, but she didn’t answer. On the second time calling, he found her phone, silent but lighting up the shadows on the floor next to her bed like she’d pushed it off to get rid of it and didn’t think twice about grabbing it again.

Emma’s keys were on her desk, and it just didn’t make any sense. Maybe she was in the bathroom? He closed her door a little, just enough so that she could push it open once she came back so he didn’t surprise her too much. Killian rolled out the desk chair, sat down, and waited. He waited thirty-five minutes before he realized she wasn’t coming back and with that, his stomach dropped.

He pushed the terrifying thoughts out of his mind and remembered what his counselor from his teen years had said about ‘projecting’ again. Just because some people acted rashly didn’t mean they all did, didn’t mean Emma did.

He needed to find her though, even if he didn’t know exactly what he would say to her yet if something  _was_  wrong.

* * *

 

He looked around campus, slyly asked all of their friends who’d seen her last, dodged David’s questions, staked out her car which without her keys would be useless, and thusly he was at her room once more, sitting on the rolling chair now almost two hours since he’d found her door unlocked without her inside.

He grabbed a post-it off her desk and wrote, ‘Have your keys, be back soon. –K,’ and smashed it up against the outside of the door then locked up her room and went back down the hall. It was just in case she came back and found herself locked out, but it was better than someone stealing her laptop, phone, wallet, and other valuables she’d left behind when she’d disappeared without a trace.

There was, however, a feeling that she might have gone somewhere familiar, a place to both think and not think, to escape even in the pitch-black darkness outside.

 _‘…usually after my shifts. I like watching the waves or just hearing them at night,’_ she once said.

He hadn’t checked the drop-off yet, so he set out to his car and let it warm up. He looked down at her keys in his hand and wondered if she would even try to make the trip there on foot, especially at this time of night, but he couldn’t find her anywhere else and it was worth a try. Emma was worth it all.

Killian drove around then through campus, his car climbing the steep hill up toward the older buildings that belonged to the school. The drop-off was a roped and fenced off parking lot with a decaying building already half into the sea, and a bunch of rebar and cracked concrete slabs. The sea pummeled the cliffside below in roaring waves, but at night, you couldn’t see a thing in the darkness. Sky blended into ocean and ocean into the rocks jutting out from the ocean underneath the spot where they usually sat. The usually blustering wind was gentle tonight, a relief to Killian when he pulled up, headlights on the spot where a blond figure in a flimsy jacket sat on the edge. In this darkness, everything seemed to be swallowed up, even the bright beams from his car, and he knew how forceful the winds could be here. They could easily suck them out and send them falling during the days with really bad weather.

Emma was startled by the light shining on her back and illuminating the once undistinguishable slabs around her. She turned her head back at the car, but was blinded by the lights facing right at her. She started to get up in fright that she was being cornered by some psycho coming to the drop-off in the middle of the night. (She would know. She was crazy, too, after all.) But she heard a voice,  _his_  voice, a voice she definitely didn’t want to hear right now calling out to her. “Emma?!” Killian shouted over the crashing water in back of her.

She raised her hand to shield her eyes from the lights which he kept trained on her.

“What are you doing here?” she asked hollowly as he rounded the car. She was in way over her head, drowning in the darkness around and inside her. At best, she was a fumbling fool, but now she wasn’t bothering to try anything anymore. Killian illuminated the night around them, literally, but to Emma, it felt as if there were no way he could bring her out of herself. She was lost, really lost this time. She felt nothing but the coldness of the coastal air numbing her stinging skin.

“What are  _you_  doing here?” he responded, voice severe with concern. He crossed over to her and took her in. It was the first time he was seeing her in days. Her eyes were so tired, sunken and drooping. Her hair stringy and wind-thrashed. “How long have you been out here?”

“I don’t know. Killian, I just want to sit by myself right now.”

“No, not happening,” he said. He wasn’t angry… But yet he was—he was angry that something horrible could’ve happened to her and that he wouldn’t have an Emma to run to when he needed to see her or hear her laugh. Right now, though, she was in no state to even emote. She was so dulled, like someone had dimmed the lights behind her eyes. “Want to tell me why you left everything on and unlocked?” he accused, her keys dangling in his hand. “You don’t even have your phone on you—what if something had happened?”

Her blank face began to contort as she regained herself. “You  _went_  in my room?” she asked heatedly. “Without my permission?” That means he saw everything. Her drawer, the knives and other sharp edges packed away in there. He was going to think she was a freak—he probably already thought she was a freak. Her eyes began to pinprick with the stinging of tears, but she was furious at him. How  _dare_  he? And how could she be so stupid just leaving everything unlocked like a dramatic idiot, even if for a moment she didn’t know what she was doing. She should’ve thought it out, she should’ve thought about the consequences.

 _‘But you weren’t thinking about consequences when you left to go sit on the edge of a cliff in the middle of the night, were you?’_  a voice taunted. She fucked up everything, she officially fucked everything in her life up.

“There’s a much bigger picture here, Emma. What is going on? Tell me what’s—”

“No!” she snapped. “You stay away from me,” she yelled, green eyes finally bright again and glossy with unshed tears.

“Emma, I can help you. Come on, love, tell me what’s wrong and we can fix it.” He was so sincere and she just broke because nothing could fix what she’d done. She screwed up everything in her life and she had no one, no family to even give a shit about whether she could somehow mend something in it back together. What an idiot she had been these last couple months, thinking and playing around like she was just a regular person doing normal things and having good normal things happen. When the whole time she was just living in a fantasy world that wasn’t possible for people like her.

There she’d been, going to meetings, hanging out with friends, writing papers and studying for quizzes—not even knowing that she was already dead to her teachers with doomed grades and looming failures. How she was slowly signing away her own termination at her work because she was an incompetent misfit trying to conform, to fit in with what in-charge adult people do with their adult lives and adult responsibilities. She was a stupid, incapable, and incompetent little brat trapped in a clumsy adult body with obligations and expectations she couldn’t meet. She was shit. It was all shit.

She hadn’t even realized she was crying in her hands, trying to block out all the light from the car so that it was just her and her darkness again. Killian was immediately in front of her, enveloping her into a hug.

It wasn’t until she registered his soothing whispers and the pressure on the cuts and scratches on her arms from where he was holding her to him that she recaptured herself, where she was, who she was with, who  _she_  was.

She pushed him away from her, wiping her face with the sleeve of her jacket. Killian looked hurt and he was, not just because she’d pushed him away like she didn’t trust him but because she was in pain and he couldn’t bear it.

“Just  _go_ , Killian!”

“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s the matter.”

“I don’t need you here. I don’t  _want_ you here,” she hissed and she hoped it hurt because maybe if she hurt him enough he’d storm away and she could prove for certain how horrible she really was.

“Well, too bad, Emma Swan,” Killian said, voice raised and eyes determined.

She whipped around to storm off into the darkness, but Killian was too quick and grasped her arm to hold her back. She howled in pain and yanked it away from him. He froze, suddenly racked with guilt because he knew she must’ve hurt herself where he’d grabbed on.

She was nursing it and staring at him with wild eyes. Out of instinct, she was preparing an excuse—perhaps, “I hurt it earlier,” or, “It’s bruised from when I hit it…” But before she could pick one to say, Killian was shrugging out of his jacket, dropping the heavy leather to the ground, and pulling up the long sleeve around his arm; the arm which had been covered with a band during their camping trip.

He stopped short of his bicep. She gaped at him, but not because he was finally going to show her what really lay underneath that band from their trip—it was what he said next:

“How about it, love? I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

She now knew one of Killian Jones’ secrets, but it came at the price of her own.

She shut her mouth and her eyes narrowed viciously at the boy in front of her.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was hard writing this chapter as someone who struggles with mental illness, anxiety, and school/life myself. Things have been decent for me, A LOT of obstacles lately to overcome though, but I'm doing it. Emma's going through a tough time though and it almost makes me project her feelings onto my own life. That being said, please take care of yourselves, loves. They call them 'triggers' for a reason. Empathize, but don't adopt Emma's mindset. She's in a toxic place, but remember there's always hope in Once Upon a Time, so of course there's hope in this story. On that note, there's always another way, hope, and an alternative in life, too; even if we can't see it immediately. Be patient with it and with yourself--I mean, it worked out for Killian, after all. He and his Swan our canonically making out on their sofa :P / :D
> 
> Love you all and have a good day! (Cry if you need to. Gods know I did a little lol)


	7. Secrets Will Kill You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, my loves, it's been about three months, I believe, and I'm so sorry if you've been waiting for an update. I had school, a car accident, and a broken laptop to contend with, but I'm up and going now and /will/ continue to be up and going with these chapters (I'm out of school until next August, yay!). A little background on this chapter, it was a difficult one to write and I'm posting it right as I've finished writing it. Please excuse any errors! Love you all!

“I promise you,” said Killian, “I’ll understand. Better than most, I’ll bet.”

Yeah right. How could he?

“Put your hand down, Killian. Whatever you’ve got hiding under there is child’s play compared to mine,” hissed Emma.

“I don’t do it anymore and you don’t have to either.”

“And what if I don’t want to stop?” she snapped. “What if I actually like it? See? You  _don’t_  understand me.”

“If you truly liked it, you wouldn’t have tried to go without, this last month.”

Of course. It dawned on her. Who else could’ve given Killian this sudden insight? “So, Elsa finally spilled. She told you and now you think you know me.”

“I already knew before Elsa  _reluctantly_  told me, so don’t be angry with her.”

“That’s impossible,” she said, eyebrows scrunched together in confusion. “I know how to cover my tracks. There’s no way you could’ve known unless she’d said something.”

Killian gulped. She was going to be furious with him. He dropped his hand from his sleeve, his own scars still hidden from her view. “I…” he trailed off.

“How could you have known, Killian?” she demanded.

“I opened your drawer,” he confessed in one guilty breath. “I saw them. Your knives, the pins, blades, everything. I put two and two together because I’ve been there, I  _get_  it.”

“You went through my things, too?!”

He reasoned, “I get how it is, to feel like there’s no other choice. That nothing can fix anything in your life or even the things that feel wrong inside yourself—“

Each breath she took became more panicked. Each heave hurt more than the last. He  _knew_. This entire time, he knew. Emma felt mortified, she felt fucking stupid. All those times he had listened to her, all those times he’d shown interest in her life, how she was doing, was all because she was another crazy person for him to analyze and practice on. He was Mr. Psychology, and she was a prime textbook case of fucked up.

Her stomach turned violently. Her head was dizzy. The lights were too bright; the cold was too sharp against her skin; her eyes strained to remain open and free from tears. She was an idiot. She wanted to vomit out the ugly feelings inside of her; the realization of how pathetic she must’ve looked while she desperately—god, she must’ve looked so desperate—tried to keep her secret.  

“You went through my things looking for clues to your next project,” she said, ignoring him.

“We feel like there’s nothing we can do to make anything better, but we have to  _try_. We do it just to do something, and then a different kind of hurt takes over. One that’s not so bad when the burn goes away—”

“I trusted you… and this whole time I was just some bullshit psychology case study for you. What were you going to write about me? Tell me, Killian, am I screwed up enough to earn you an ‘A’ in your class, or maybe a solid ‘B,’ instead?”

He stopped his speech, disbelieving her words for a moment. As seriously as possible, even borderline upset that she would even think him that low, he said, “Are you joking? You were never some experiment. How could you think that? Emma, I care about you. I’ve always cared about you, and I  _will_  always care about you. You can yell at me, you can be as angry as you want, but don’t think for a moment that you are or have been anything other than one of my best friends. I’m not abandoning you. I’m too selfish for that. I need you in my life, Swan.”

That familiar inkling of self-doubt refused any relief his emotion offered. She felt her body betray her. Her eyes prickled with hate at herself for being so  _weak_.

“We share so much, love. You always talk to me. What’s changed? Why can’t you talk to me now?” he asked; a desperate plea for her to allow him to help. “I’d never judge you. I’d never hurt you. You know that. Deep down, you know I can understand you.”

Killian had always had more power than her demons though. She felt a shift in herself. Her anger let way to the sadness she had been trying so hard to keep at bay because the devotion in his voice was too much for her to handle. She wanted to believe. She’d never wanted to accept something so much in her life as she did that moment.

The pain clawing inside her tore through her anger. It was the only strength she’d had left to cling to. Tear after tear began to slide down her cheeks in quick, constant streams. She had to hide them like she hid everything. It was what she was good at. It’s what she did.

She dropped her wet face into her hands, the freeze of her skin soothing the burn of her crying, the tears threatening to leave grooves in her face. She’d been crying so much these days, Emma was surprised the carvings didn’t already exist.

“Come on, sweetheart,” said Killian, now only a half-step away from her, wondering how in the world he was supposed to hold her if the rest of her hurt like her arm. She was in pain outside as well as in. The sharp inhales from behind the cage of her hands signaled as much. She was alone. She needed to be hugged, to be comforted, but she’d made that nearly impossible, she’d hurt herself. Now no one could come near her. But hadn’t she wanted that in the beginning? The nagging demons inside her head taunted her with vicious, snake-like voices.

She shuddered, a heart-clenching sob escaping her and he couldn’t resist. He snaked his arm around her waist, his other hand cradling the back of her head into his chest. His touches were incredibly light and careful. She was in enough pain as it was.

And then there was another shift in her. The heat from his nearness, the press of his solid chest and arms around her made her feel more anchored and secure than she had in days. Still, she couldn’t lift her head from her hands. She was too ashamed of herself, of the hysterical roller coaster she had been this last week; the train wreck she’d been the last year; the reject and failure she’d been her entire life.

“I’ll understand,” he repeated again and again, trying to soothe the truth out of her, willing her to share the burden of her pain.

“I—I don’t want you to,” she cried between wheezes.

He scrunched his eyebrows together, almost tempted to let her go just to see her face and try to read the meaning of her words, but he couldn’t bear to let her go; he’d only just got her. She let out another muffled whine, and he stroked her back, asking her what she’d meant by that.

She didn’t offer him an explanation.

“What’s so wrong about understanding you?”

She twisted from his feather-light hold on her and dropped her hands. Streaks shone across her splotchy cheeks, damp hair clung to the sides of her face, and pain, so much hopelessness, was etched into her furrowed brow while true agony dragged down the corners of her mouth. A person should never feel that helpless. It made his heart break.

He still couldn’t figure out what she’d meant though. Why would she  _still_  want to be alone in her suffering? “What can be so bad about me knowing—” he began.

“Because you know too much already,” she said between hiccuping breaths. “You know and I don’t know how to deal with this, with you knowing what a freak I am.”

“You’re not a freak, Emma—“

“And you keep stealing all my secrets, and now I don’t have any left, and I don’t…” She wiped at her face, a losing war against her spilling eyes. “I don’t know who I am without them. I can’t be anyone else. I don’t know how to be anyone else…”

He frowned at her, channeling his old hurt and his old pain to better comprehend. He replied, “I get it. I know how it feels like there’s something broken about me, like I’m defective. But, I’m going to tell you what Liam told me and that’s that holding these things in and not letting the right people in will  _destroy_  you from the inside out. Your pain, everything that feels wrong—that shouldn’t be something for you to bear alone; especially when you have your own family now. Because, Emma, we’re your family. I am. And you’re more than your hurt. You’re Emma.”

She held herself now, arms clamped around her sides, trying to keep everything from pouring out of her in a tidal wave of emotion. She shrugged. “I don’t know what that means.”

“It means,” he started, approaching her again, “that you’re more than everything you’ve been through and more than what you’re going through now.” He offered her a smile, but she couldn’t bring herself to give him one back. “You’re coffee before conversation in the mornings, hot chocolates at night. You’re ‘fighting Kristoff for the last bear claw’ and brilliant ideas at our meetings. You’re the only person who can effectively tell Kristoff and Victor to shut up. You’re a mess of hair that you leave all over my room. You’re David’s little sister, Elsa’s only true friend, and most importantly, you’re my friend, too.”

Her eyes welled with a new batch of tears, but while they flowed freely, the pain inside her began to slightly quell.

“You’re ‘cinnamon on anything you can consume,’ and someone who takes pride in that death contraption you call a car and how it’s still running against all odds. Mystery books read a thousand times because you want to find all the clues. You’re leather boots and poems, trick shots at pool; making fun of me for all my weird, neat freak quirks, and kicking everyone’s ass at poker. Do you get it? You’re all these things and so much more. You know who you are, Emma. You’re someone who’s going to make a difference one day because you know what it’s like not to have anyone in your corner—who’s not going to let that happen to another kid. Not on your watch.”

He reached for her hands, now warm and damp from her face.

“But, you’re also someone who has people in her corner  _now_ , and nothing is going to change that—no secret can change that because you’ve worked hard to let people close to you, and you deserve to be cared about unconditionally.”

With eyes still watering, the smallest of smiles formed on her face, and Killian realized how long his heart had been clenched while waiting for that smile to grace her lips again.

“You’re all these things, yeah? Every last detail that makes you  _you_ , hold onto it. That’s who you are, Emma. And I know there’s still that little girl who’s scared and lonely in you, and I’m not saying you have to completely get rid of her to be happy because I don’t know if  _I’ve_  even gotten rid of that boy in me either, but you have to understand that you’re not  _just_  that little girl. That girl couldn’t have gotten you here today, with everything you’ve accomplished and all these people that care about you.”

She wasn’t hyperventilating anymore. Her tears had slowed even if her cheeks were still red and wet. Killian, always so good at his speeches, lovingly picked each new word and affirmation. They echoed and filled the hollowness inside her with a warmth that had been gone for a long time, particularly the last week. She went to him and wrapped her arms around his neck, burying her face into the black cotton of his shirt. He held her back, still minding any wounds she might have.

“I still feel like her so much,” said Emma hoarsely. “I can see them and hear them—those families, kids, the social workers, asshole teachers… Whenever I fuck up, whenever I’m failing, it’s like they’re all laughing, screaming, and kicking my ass again. I’m so tired of trying to be better than it all. I’m so angry and upset all the time and nothing’s working, Killian. Nothing’s making these feelings go away. Except, well…” She didn’t have to explain that part. Killian could feel the burn on his arm, he knew.

“Hey, I hear mine, too, sometimes; my dad, those little bastards that’d gang up on me when Liam wasn’t around to scare them off. I feel them more than I’d like, but the thing is, you and I, we can’t give those demons anymore of ourselves than we already have because that’s what they are—they’re not real. Those memories, feelings, they’re only there to make us feel alone, and we’re not. You’re not. You have our friends and me.”

He lifted his hand to her face, to tilt it until their eyes met again and was inspired by the clarity he now saw there. She was exhausted, drained, still saddened, and maybe tired of trying, but right then, he’d said something enough to give her a reason not to give up completely. She was keeping some of his words with her.

“Emma, you’re a bloody marvel. You’re a beautiful person and the greatest lie detector I’ve ever known. You have to know that everything this darkness makes you feel is a lie. Those demons hurting you are lying. Don’t give them anymore power. Trust me. We can tell them all to shut up together,” he said. “What do you say?”

There were so many conflicting voices and feelings, all urging her to go in separate directions, but she chose to listen to one in particular; Killian’s.

“I say I’m freezing my ass off right now,” she sighed.

As they drove through the inky night, back to campus, he filled up that evil silence within her, the one that always attacked her mind when left to her own devices, with the rev of his engine and the sound of his voice, humming and singing to their favorite radio station until they arrived back at his dorm room because she couldn’t stand to be in hers.

He flipped on the light and turned on the electric kettle on his desk, tossing his keys and wallet next to the two mugs already propped there by the corner—one stained inside from coffee with a logo around it of the high school Emma had graduated from, the other a plain ocean blue with a chip on the handle. He was prepared for late nights with Emma already—packets of instant coffee and hot chocolate in a little tin box next to those mugs. Tonight he wouldn’t leave her side and would provide her with all the hot chocolate she could ever wish for, a small comfort to her, he hoped.

She kicked off her shoes and automatically crawled to where the mattress met the wall and shrugged out of her pathetic excuse for a jacket, the thin material almost tearing at the seams when she pulled it too hard. Killian watched her, but she kept her eyes downcast and brought her legs to her chest. She tugged at a loose thread on the hem of her leggings.

He sat at the edge of the bed, angled towards her, waiting for her to look up, but she didn’t. She avoided his stare and continued to fiddle with the string.

“Get out of there, love,” he said.

“Hm?” She ventured to look up, settling her chin on one bent knee.

“Get out of your head,” he elaborated.

“Ah. ‘Mindfulness,’” she replied. “That was my first lesson, you know. The first day I went to club and I was doing the ribbons. I learned what ‘mindfulness’ meant.”

“Is it helpful?”

“I guess. My head hurts too much to really care about anything right now though.”

“Hot chocolate then?” The tab on the kettle flung up, announcing it was done.

“Please.”

He gave her a smile and prepared their mugs. Emma reached for the TV remote and turned it on with a static click then started flipping through late night TV shows. Sitcom, sitcom, sitcom. She wasn’t in the mood for a situation  _comedy_. She stopped on the weather channel, took a sip of her cocoa, and let it be.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “about earlier. I’m sorry for what I said. I didn’t really want you to go—and I did need you, I just didn’t know how to handle the whole thing.”

Killian sighed, a wry smile on his face. “When I was in high school, I didn’t want anyone to help me either. I  _did_ , but I also didn’t. Yelled, threw a fit, then a punch at Liam.”

“Oh, shit,” she  _smiled_.

“He’s a good brother. I was angry and scared. Trust me, you were nothing but graceful back there, so no apologies necessary.”

“You let me get away with too much.”

“Only when you’re cheating at cards,” he joked.

“I did  _not_  cheat that time and you know it,” she said, coming back to herself a little.

“I’m just supposed to believe you had a royal flush right after two straight flushes. I call bullshit, love.”

Her smile weakened as she stared down into her mug. Were they just supposed to sit here and try to banter like they used to before she lost her mind?

“So, now what?” she asked the question haunting her. “What happens now? Aren’t I supposed to go to the hospital or something?” She thought of  _It’s Kind of a Funny Story_  and of ugly hospital socks with the non-slip grip on the bottoms of the soles.

“One step at a time, love. First, tell me what happened. What triggered everything?”

She took a deep breath and let out a long exhale. She felt shame rise again within her. “I failed.”

“Failed what?”

“Ha,” she started dryly, “how about life?”

“And what specifically in life?”

“My classes. I failed all my classes. I fucked up this entire semester.”

He took a moment, searching for solutions. It didn’t take him long. “Alright, no worries. We know someone who can help with that. We can probably even get this semester taken off your transcript if we do it the right way.”

“And I got fired from my job which was humiliating.”

“You hated it there anyway. Plus, now you don’t have to ask for time off while we get you situated.”

“Your ‘glass half full’ techniques aren’t fooling me, bud. But I do appreciate the effort, even if my world feels like it’s turning into shit.”

“I’d never try to fool you, and I’m being honest. The school counselor deals with these situations all the time. You have a legitimate reason for not doing so well this semester. As for work, you’re going to need the time off, as I said…”

“That last part sounds serious. I’m going to the hospital, aren’t I?”

“No bullshit?”

“No bullshit,” she confirmed.

“Yes. And they’ll keep you for at least a week.”

“They’re going to evaluate me…”

“Yes, but it’s not as scary as it sounds. Movies are movies.”

“Less  _Girl, Interrupted_?” she joked through her nerves.

“Bloody Hollywood. It’s not the ‘60s anymore either. Seriously, everyone is pretty friendly in there. Sad, sure… but friendly. And bored mostly, so they all just like to talk and watch TV.”

“You’ve been?”

“The adolescent unit was moved to the adult unit, too. I was the only teenager though.”

“How long were you there for?”

“A week and a half.”

“Ah…”

“But only because I didn’t believe in any of it and was a stubborn asshole. You’re in a much better position than me. You know what good these resources do.”

“I just preach it, Killian. I don’t know if I believe it.”

“You’ll be okay, love. You’ll probably even like it. I did, in the end. I liked art therapy.”

“TV and art therapy.”

“And hot chocolate and ice-cream cups.”

“Alright, that doesn’t sound  _so_  bad,” she giggled.

“I figure, I’ll keep you company tonight—”

“Babysit me.”

“— _Keep you company_  tonight, and in the morning we’ll go see a counselor. Get school squared away and see what she says from there. Unless, of course, you feel like we should go immediately. It’s up to you, Emma. Whatever feels best.”

“We can wait until morning,” she murmured. “I’d like to hear what the counselor has to say about school.”

“Sounds like a plan.” This plan felt better than the one she had a couple hours ago: searching for new places to hurt herself.

“Thank you, Killian. I really appreciate this,” she said.

“Of course, Emma. I’m in this for the long haul.”

“I wish—I wish I could tell you the same. I hate to be a downer, but the truth is that I don’t know how long I’ll be around. Just a couple hours ago, just existing in general hurt, and I swore I couldn’t stand it for another second.”

“And now?”

“It’s gone up to minutes.”

 He swallowed his fear. He needed her to be around. “Don’t worry. I felt that way, too. It’s just hitting you post-adolescence instead of in the ‘teens.’”

A wash of sadness crept over her that anyone else, especially her Killian, could feel the way she felt—what she was  _still_ feeling crawling beneath her surface. Her eyes traveled to his arm, the one pressed against her own right then. His secret.

“Can I see them?” she asked, half expecting him to deny her, praying he wouldn’t.

He paused only for a few seconds, then nodded at her and pulled back. He took her mug and placed it on the nightstand before reaching for his sleeve and tugging it up. Soon, he showed his bicep, revealing one-by-one, two-by-two, and more and more scars with every inch of exposed flesh.

She felt guilty for ever calling his scars child’s play. Strewn across in random chaos along his bicep were puffed up circles, half-circles, strange, darkened patterns burned into his skin. She wondered what in the world could possibly have branded that shape into his skin over and over and  _over_  again when he read her mind and answered her silent question.

“’Smileys,’” explained Killian.

“What’s a ‘smiley’?” asked Emma.

“It’s when you tilt a lighter until it’s hot. Burning hot. And then, the metal leaves a smile behind, supposedly.” He was so nervous, unsure of what she thought, what he looked like under her fixated stare. “They look like they’re screaming, really. Not smiling,” he muttered,

She ran her fingers across the puffed edges of one, then another, and along the darkened lines to a neat row of five circular marks, no bigger than a pencil head each. “What about these ones? They’re different.”

“I used to smoke in high school,” he admitted. “Had to put them out somewhere.” It was morbid humor. He regretted the joke; his distaste for it left a bitterness on his tongue.

“Why?” she asked, stunned by all the scars and marks from Killian’s past battles with himself; suddenly not understanding how this amazing person in front of her could do this.

“You know why,” he replied softly. “Doing this was the only way I knew how to protect myself. It’s distorted, the logic, but it made sense when I did it.”

She left him with silence, her thumb moving over each scar as she traced the patterns with her eyes, taking her time trying to understand each one. Protecting yourself by hurting yourself; to stop the hurt inflicted by other people, things, situations, and emotions that felt outside yourself. But, she understood the desperate way of coping, of trying to redirect the pain that you just couldn’t rip out of yourself no matter how hard you clawed and scraped.

In that moment, Emma understood Elsa, too, and how she’d said looking at Emma’s scars hurt her because right then she was looking at Killian’s and it hurt, too. She could see the pain, feel it in the soft scar tissue. The only difference is that Emma didn’t have to guess at what kind of pain Killian had been in when he did this to himself; she’d experienced and lived through it.

“No one else here knows but you,” muttered Killian. “Liam, my aunt, and uncle—they’re the only people in my life who do, but now you do, too.”

“Thank you for showing me.” Her words radiated with appreciation and empathy. He understood her, but she understood him back.

“The plan is to get it all covered up with a tattoo. I’m just trying to find an artist who knows how to work with scar tissue.”

“I’ll help you find one,” she smiled.

“I’d appreciate that,” he smiled back.

“You’re brave for showing me, but I’m sorry, Killian. I don’t want to show you mine.”

“That’s alright, love. You don’t have to, but I need to know—are there any we need to get checked out?”

“No. I guess I showed more restraint that I thought. There are just  _a lot_  of them.”

“I’m sorry I hurt you earlier. I should’ve been more careful knowing what I knew.”

“No,” she shook her head, “don’t apologize. You couldn’t have known. I only started on my arms today. I know I always wear tank tops and short sleeves, so…”

“You won’t need to do it ever again, I promise you. We’ll find help.”

She really hoped for that, but she wasn’t sure if she believed it. “Killian…”

“Yes?”

“What if I can’t stop? I mean, I’ve tried and look where it got me.”

“This time, you won’t be doing it all by yourself. You’ll have help and support. There are people who train to tackle all the issues that feel too much for us to handle. We’re not the only ones who’ve felt this way. We just can’t keep it a secret. And you’ve already told me and Elsa, despite the circumstances it happened in; you shared, and that’s huge.”

“Glass half full, again.”

“Is it working yet?” he asked playfully.

“I want to say yes.”

“We’ll get there, love.”

“Seems impossible. Seems like a long trip and I’m exhausted as it is.”

“It’s been a rough couple of hours on top of a rough week. You need some rest.”

“Can I use you as a human pillow? Since you still only have one pathetic flat one.”

“Not all of us need to sleep in a marshmallow bed, Swan.”

“Shh.” She untucked the blanket under them and threw it around herself and Killian, settling into his side. “I’m trying to sleep.”

“My apologies, princess,” he joked, and like so many nights before, Emma dozed off on his shoulder, succumbing to the tiredness draining her body; ceasing the pounding of her temples and skull and the dry strain of her eyes.

Killian flipped through channels, a lot on his mind, and tired himself. He’d channeled old hurt, he’d took on Emma’s fresh pain, and now he was grateful for her calm, steady breaths versus the panicked, sharp ones from earlier. He felt her relax against him and in turn, he became less tense, too. The bright light and vivid colors of the sitcom playing quietly in the background started to blur and his head fell back against Emma’s. He’d just rest his eyes for a moment.

He fell into a sleep almost as deep as hers while happy faces and studio audience laughter from the TV played on until morning.

* * *

 

Emma slept, waking up at the peeking dawn then closing her eyes once more and snuggling back into Killian’s ‘pathetic’ excuse for a pillow which she’d left him for. She retreated back into a world of numbed nonsense, jumbled images, and mundane memories. Killian still rested upright in the corner, slouched against the bed frame and wall, too tired to care about the kink in his neck or the coldness over where the blanket had been pulled away from him by Emma.

The stillness in the room was snatched away by the shrill ringing and vibration of Killian’s phone. It went to voicemail, and the both of them stopped stirring in their sleep, but it soon rang again and Emma groaned, blindly tapping Killian awake with her free hand and telling him to wake up so that  _she_  could go back to sleep.

He leaned over her to the nightstand and tapped the screen to answer the call, raised it to his ear, and hoarsely answered, “Hello?”

“Hey, I just wanted to make sure you found Emma alright. I sent her a text and you a text last night, but you were probably sleeping—and I figured if you were actually sleeping, that meant you’d found her and she was okay.”

Elsa.

“Sound deduction, love. She’s sleeping.”

“I  _was_  sleeping,” said Emma, flinging hair out of her face and sitting up in a groggy haze.

Killian put Elsa on speakerphone. “Hi, Emma,” Elsa greeted cautiously. “Um… Everything okay?”

“Okay enough,” she replied. “Killian’s got me.”

“Alright, good, I’m glad.”

“Yeah, I’m going to see the counselor in an hour,” estimated Emma, figuring she’d put Elsa’s mind at ease and lay her cards on the table.

“Oh,” chimed Elsa, “great! I’ll just, I guess I’ll call you later.”

“Sounds good.”

“Okay, bye guys,” she said, a little more chipper.

“Bye,” said Emma and Killian in unison.

“Well, does that mean you’re ready then, Swan?”

“Can we stop by my room? I want to brush my teeth and change.”

“Sure thing. So,” he said, stretching out his cramped neck, “coffee?”

* * *

 

They went about their morning routines together. Killian didn’t need to say anything when they arrived at Emma’s room. He leaned up against the doorway while she gathered her things and a change of clothes. When their eyes fell on the knife on the bed, Emma looked at him then grabbed it, closed it, and tossed it in the drawer; slamming it shut with a force that said, ‘Don’t worry. I won’t,’ and walked with him down the hall to the bathrooms where he waited outside for her to finish.

He was hovering, but she understood why—and in all honesty, she was comforted by the company. Better his than her demons.

She properly locked up her room that time, checked to make sure she had her phone, and off they went, careful to avoid busy hallways and walkways; taking the back ways to the official counseling offices. Emma sat down while Killian spoke for her at the receptionist’s desk. The woman walked around the divide with a clipboard and over to Emma, Killian in tow.

“Hi, sweetie,” said the woman, so bright eyed and put together with her coordinated pink lipstick and magenta blouse. She said ‘sweetie’ so naturally; in a way that you knew she meant it and in a kindness that blew over you like a soft breeze. “Just fill out your name, student ID number, and answer the questions on the bottom. One of the counselors will be with you shortly, okay?” She gave Killian and Emma one last smile then glided back to her perch at the desk.

“She’s nice,” Emma mouthed at Killian as he sat down next to her and helped her fill out her forms.

They waited for a good while though fifteen minutes passed in what felt like five because she was so nervous. Her heart beat heavily in her chest and her leg bounced three times a second. Both she and Killian stayed quiet in the waiting area while the receptionist chatted lowly, but gleefully on the phone. Her giggles and enthusiasm clear over the indistinct murmur of words.

“Emma?” a counselor called from down the short corridor of doors. The woman who came into view was taller than her, around Killian’s height, and had a thick, curvy frame. Emma noticed how pretty her turquoise scarf, dyed to look like water rippling in the sunlight, contrasted with the professional all black attire she wore. The scarf matched the woman’s eyes which were staring at her with the gentlest expression she’d ever seen on a person.

Emma stood up, noticing how Killian didn’t stand with her. She looked to him, hoping to convey her confusion. She needed him with her; she didn’t know how to do this alone.

Finally, Emma spoke. “Can—can he come with us?” She didn’t care if it was unconventional in the rules of counseling. Emma begged the woman with wide, wild eyes.

“Of course,” the woman said without missing a beat.

They all entered a room that smelled like a vanilla and lavender air freshener. Normally Emma hated those, but right now, the scent distracted her from the millions of miles per hour that her thoughts raced at.

“My name is Dolores, I’m a licensed MFT—a marriage, family therapist—for the university,” she spoke in a calm, slow voice designed to lull Emma’s nerves. It was working.

“I’m Killian,” he offered.

“Hello, Killian,” smiled Dolores. “So, what brings you in, Emma?”

“Uh…” She didn’t know where to begin. She looked to Killian for guidance. He gave her a reassuring look and nodded his head. She took a deep breath. “I failed my classes.” Well… It was the truth. Not the entire truth, but part of it, Emma reasoned.

“Hm,” hummed Dolores, jotting down on her yellow notepad. “And how have you been feeling about it?”

“Um… Depressed, of course… and distracted. Well, I’ve been distracted the entire year, really, so I guess that’s nothing new,” said Emma. She thought she’d discredited herself, a little disclaimer as she was used to doing, but Dolores read between the lines.

“Would you say it’s hard to focus on your assignments?”

“Y—yeah,” answered Emma. “Exactly. Work, too.”

“And you mentioned feeling depressed. Can you describe to me what that feels like to you?”

“You know, I’m sad. I don’t feel like doing anything—no, I mean, I  _can’t_  do anything, even if I want to. I mess up and make mistakes, but I don’t know how to fix them. So, I just keep sleeping, thinking it’s going to go away, but it doesn’t.”

“Would you say you feel helpless sometimes?”

“Yeah. Pretty much. That’s a good word.”

“And do you do anything outside of your classes?”

“I’m in the MHA Club with Killian,” Emma glanced at him, he smiled back, “and I used to work, but I just got fired.”

“Do you think these feelings might have affected your work and school?”

Well. Of course. As Killian had said, Dolores was trained. She was obviously nice and she seemed to get it so far. Could she understand this? Killian was right though—secrets would eventually kill her.

So, she confessed.

“Yes. I’d feel fine and everything would be fine. Nothing wrong would happen and if it did, I could handle it, but lately, well the last year, I just can’t do it anymore. Not like I used to. I started failing my tests and messing up at work. I just, dropped the ball on everything.”

Dolores’s hand moved furiously over the pad of paper. Emma could see the flowing cursive, but not read the words.

“Now, Emma. I want to ask you, do you think you could talk to me without Killian here? It would be really great if you could do that. Is that okay? Just for five minutes?”

No Killian?

“It’s okay, love,” he urged. “You’re doing great.”

Emma looked back at Dolores and realized there was no threat in this place. This space was safe. She could do it. She hoped she could do it.

“Okay,” she agreed.

“Remember about the secrets, alright?” he whispered to her. She nodded and watched him open the door then shut it behind him.

Emma took deep breaths, hands clenched to the arms of the soft plush chair she reclined against.

“Emma, I’m going to ask you to answer a series of very personal questions.”

“Alright.”

“They might feel uncomfortable, but know that you’re in a safe space and I’m only here for you; to listen and help. So, you think you can do this for me?”

“Yes.”

Dolores handed her a clipboard, already loaded with a single printed page of statements and scales of ‘Never,’ ‘A little of the time,’ ‘Some of the time,’ to ‘Good part of the time,’ and ‘Most of the time.’

She checked off the boxes as honestly as she could. It was easier to write it than to say it.

  1. “I have trouble focusing or concentrating”—Good part of the time. (She answered.)
  2. “I feel sad, down, and blue”—Most of the time.
  3. “I have trouble sleeping or sleep too much”—Most of the time.
  4. “I have a poor appetite or overeat”—Never. (She wanted to laugh. Her appetite was very much intact.)
  5. “I have crying spells or feel like it”—Most of the time. (She didn’t want to laugh at that one.)
  6. “I have little interest or pleasure in doing things”—Most of the time.
  7. “I feel irritable”—Some of the time.
  8. “I have a good feeling about the future”—A little of the time.
  9. “I can see myself in five years from now”—A little of the time.
  10. “I feel nervous and anxious”—Most of the time.
  11. “I am often tired or have little energy”—Most of the time.
  12. “I feel like a failure or that I have let people down”—Most of the time.
  13. “These problems have made it difficult for me at work, home, school, or with other people”—Most of the time.
  14. “I have thoughts that I would be better off dead”— (She hesitated for a moment. Then took the plunge.) Most of the time.
  15. “I think about death”—(Lately?) Most of the time.
  16. “I have or have thought about hurting others”—Never.
  17. “I have or have thought of hurting myself”— (…She had to answer it. It was the last one.) Some of the time. (No. Scratch that. She crossed out the check mark and rewrote her answer.) Most of the time.



Emma handed back the clipboard to Dolores and analyzed the counselor’s expression. Or tried to. The woman was expressionless.  _‘This woman could give me a run for my money in poker,’_  thought Emma.

“How long,” the counselor finally spoke, “would you say you’ve been having thoughts about dying?”

What a loaded question. Emma settled on, “It’s like, I have for a long time, but in degrees. Lately it’s been a…  _higher_  degree.”

“And have you ever harmed yourself?”

“…Yes,” she said.

“What type of things do you do to yourself, Emma?”

“Um… I cut and scratch my legs. But, well, the last few days, I’ve done it in other places.”

“How long would you say you’ve been doing this?”

“At least a year.”

“Are any severe enough to need immediate medical attention?”

“No.”

“Okay,” said Dolores, finishing the last of her notes. She took off her reading glasses and set the clipboard, notepad, pen, and glasses on the table next to her. “I want you to know how much I appreciate your honesty and that it’s very brave what you’re doing right now. Seeking help and being open to receiving it is one of the bravest things you can do.”

“…Can Killian come back inside now?” asked Emma.

* * *

 

Killian resumed his place in the plush chair next to Emma’s. Noticing the vice grip she had on it, he picked up her hand and held it.

“So, what we’re going to do next is talk to Admission and Records and get the forms for you to fill out about your courses, your student number, and other information. After we fill them out, I’ll sign off on them, and we’ll submit them for review. You shouldn’t be penalized for how you feel right now, Emma, and we have policies to ensure that you don’t.”

“So, what happens to this semester?”

“Once reviewed and approved, we can hopefully excuse this semester from your transcript due to ‘extenuating circumstances’ while we find the resources to help you feel better, okay?”

Emma nodded.

“Now, we need to talk about the more immediate plan.”

“I—I want to go to the hospital,” said Emma. There was even a certain amount of confidence in her voice when she’d said it. She knew she’d have to go anyway. She admitted to suicidal ideation and to self-harming. There was no way to avoid it, but she didn’t care, she didn’t  _want_  to avoid it because that would mean prolonging how she felt right then which was crappy beyond compare. Emma was ready for change. Her meeting with Dolores solidified her thought that there were people and resources that could really help her. She could benefit from this. She just had to reach out for it.

Besides, what was the alternative?

She had two options: stay at rock bottom or go to the hospital where people would try to pull her back out of herself.

She chose hope.

* * *

 

Okay.

Well.

So, it was more nerve-racking that she thought.

After Killian and Emma had left the counseling office, paperwork filled out, school now filed away from under ‘Things to do’ to ‘Things done,’ they stopped by her room where Killian advised her on what to bring in her duffle bag.

“They’ll provide you a toothbrush and toothpaste, hair brush, lotion, shampoo, all of that.”

“I’m bringing my face wash though. Acne doesn’t give a shit about depression.”

“You can bring hoodies and sweaters, but they’ll throw away the string on the hood. So, if you want to keep it, best to take it out now.”

“Seriously?”

“Shoe laces, too. So, I suggest your slip-on things.”

“’Flats.’ Shoe laces, too?” she asked. “Really?”

“Not everyone goes in voluntarily, love,” he said sadly. “And people get… creative.”

“Alright. Slippers and flats it is.”

“Bring a couple of books—”

“If I can’t have shoelaces, how am I supposed to charge my phone? Isn’t a cord just as bad?”

“No phones,” he chuckled.

“You’re kidding me.”

“That’s why I said to bring a book. Shouldn’t be hard. You have a thousand in here alone, after all,” he teased. “A notebook. They’ll provide a pen there.”

“No pens, too?!”

“They didn’t allow anything from outside when I went in really, but things could be more lax now.”

“Okay.” She sighed, staring at her packed bag. “That’s it then. We’re off.”

He wrapped his arm around her shoulder; she wrapped hers around his waist. “Don’t worry so much, Emma. Think of it as a vacation. You’ll get sleep meds, too. It’ll be the best sleep of your life. I envy you.”

“Yeah. A vacation in the adult psychiatric institution,” she sighed.

“’Behavioral center,’” he countered.

“Psych ward,” she said dryly. He frowned. “I’m fine. Just my humor. It’s how I’m coping with my nerves. I don’t know what to expect.”

“It’s fine, love. Don’t stress though.”

“So, I’m isolated from the outside world in a hospital for a week or two?”

“Of course not. I’ll visit you every day.”

“I get visitors?”

“Even prisoners get visitors,” he laughed. “You’re going to a place that wants to help you. Family and friends are a good thing. Just make sure you add me to the list of approved visitors. Oh, and Elsa, if you wish.”

“I’d like to see Elsa, but the others, could we not tell them just yet? I mean, I haven’t even been admitted yet.”

“We’ll tell them when you’re ready or not tell them at all, it’s entirely up to you.”

“I really appreciate everything you’re doing for me, Killian.”

“I need you in my life, Swan. And it’d be best if you were happy, too.”

“I need you in mine, too, Killian. You have no idea.”

There were not enough words to describe how much of a role Killian played in her everyday life. He made the mundane fun and exciting, he made the horrible bearable and conquerable. Standing there with him at her side, the way they talked to each other, made her wish she wasn’t who she was. Even if they shared the same type of sufferings, she wished she could be ‘normal.’ Maybe in an alternate universe, a happier Emma—a less damaged version of herself—was with Killian in all the ways she wished she could be in this universe deep down.

She thought about it while he drove, left hand on the wheel, right hand on hers. She thought about it as she explained again to the medical assistant in the emergency room that she was suffering from suicidal ideation. She thought about it while and after being evaluated in a holding room with chicken wire between the glass panes of the room and leather strapped restraints hanging from sides of the twin-size bed in the center of the room.

The nurse, noticing her wary glances at the buckles and belts, assured her that they rarely used those. That it was too much paperwork, too, then proceeded to take at least the two in view away from the bed in case she wanted to rest.

Killian and Emma sat cross-legged next to each other on the tall bed in the center of the room. Watching videos on Killian’s phone while she got her last data-fix before being stripped of her rights to 1) owning a gun for the five years from the date of discharge from the hospital, and 2) stripped of her rights to internet and cell phone. The gun, she could deal with. Her phone? That was another story. She felt ashamed by how dependent she actually was on it. Plus, it was her connection to her world and soon, she would be taken out of it and put somewhere else; somewhere where door hooks were on pivots so you couldn’t hang yourself, blinds were encased in glass because, once again, string was a no-no, and even the shower rod was built into the ceiling.

They waited hours, playing on Killian’s phone until his battery was low and eating chocolate pudding cups scrounged up by the kind nurse who’d checked her in.

Eventually, they called for her when a psychiatrist at the behavioral unit she was destined to go to accepted her case file. One paramedic carried her bag while another belted her down (standard belts, so she didn’t fall off the stretcher. Not the ones for strapping patients’ limbs down to the beds). Killian walked beside them until they reached the double doors separating the afternoon sun and parking lot from the emergency room.

Finally, with a lift and a jerk, Emma was rolled into the back of the ambulance to be transported to the center; Killian shouting out to her that he’d see her later that night during visiting hours.

She waved a free hand, trying not to look terrified in the back of an ambulance, but Killian knew better. They smiled at each other one last time.

The ambulance doors shut and they began to drive away with Emma lying on a stretcher, making soothing conversation with one of the more sociable paramedics who cheerily wished her, “Hope you get better!”

“Yeah. Me, too,” whispered Emma.

 


	8. Try, Try, and Try Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A lighter chapter for the New Year! Plus, some familiar favorite characters we know and love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a lighter chapter for the new year. Emma's going through uncharted territory very much like we do every day of our lives and especially during days like these. 2017 is symbolic for new beginnings, the ending of old patterns that don't serve us anymore. It should be about being kind to ourselves, so if you need help, if you need a sign-this is it. This is the year to do it. 2016 was tough, but may 2017 be a year of strength, of positive change, and most importantly, hope. Love you all dearly for coming along in this adventure with me. You all have a special place in my heart and I hope you can feel that love. This night can also be a difficult one, too, so please find the link in the first chapter, at the bottom of this one, in the summary, or on my tumblr blog (by the same username) and find support. You're not alone, just like Emma is realizing that she isn't either. Take care my dears, see you next chapter in our new, fresh start of 2017!

The darkness in her head was on the brink of mutiny. She imagined creatures desperate like ants scurrying away from water, trampling over one another to escape inevitable drowning. Or like feral animals surrounded by hot smoke, running and crawling with nowhere to go. The darkness had been so wild with free reign of her mind that last week, but now it started to slow down. She was beginning to feel the burn of the little light Killian had somehow helped her recover. It’d been stowed away and hidden, something unknown to even the darkest parts of her, but Killian had seen it. He knew it was there just like Liam had shown him his. It was a secret hope, a secret weapon for a rainy day when she needed that strength to do what she was doing now—saving herself. Because when it came down to it, she was the only one who could.

Sure, Killian could point her in the direction, the professionals could show her the way and steps, but she knew that she would ultimately be the one to make it work. This was a truth she’d learned early on in life—that friends like David could help her, but she had to be the one to fight. She’d come to accept that life rarely threw you a bone and when it did, it usually aimed it at your head. But knowing that Killian and Elsa would be there for her was a comfort, and comfort was strength right then because to be honest, she still felt fragile. Fighting required a certain amount of concern for yourself, after all; a type of self-love that she had little of. But, the paramedic told her that this was all part of the road, ‘the road to recovery.’ It would be bumpy and with another dip of the ambulance, Emma was certain this trip would be as rough metaphorically as it was literally.

The rough landings of the uneven asphalt underneath them made everything jump, jitter, and jerk; yet her paramedic seemed unfazed by it all and kept talking. Sometimes, there were pauses when the woman had something official to write, to do, or to say to the other member driving, and that’s when it had hit Emma how wrecked she felt; how worn-out she was.

 _‘Plastic or glass?’_  she tried to distract herself, staring at the windows of the drawers and cabinets around her.

The nagging feeling of embarrassment and shame couldn’t be ignored though and she started thinking of all the people who had  _real_  problems in life; not just a kid who couldn’t function as an adult. A stupid, slow, pathetic creature who’d messed up school and a simple waitressing gig. Killian had said these services helped people like her, like him, and Dolores seemed convinced she needed this treatment, too. But what if she got there and someone told her that her problems were her fault, that they weren’t worthy of all this work? How far would she have to fall in order to be taken seriously? Or, would she never be taken seriously? Was she just a slacker? Incapable and lazy, helpless and incompetent, immature, disgusting, a waste, irresponsible—

“What was I saying?” the woman asked.

Emma didn’t know what she’d been saying. She had been too busy listing off all the reasons why this psychiatrist who’d taken her on might send her packing.

“Recovery. That’s right.”

There was that word again.

“The road to recovery isn’t always a straight shot. So, if things aren’t going as quick as you expect them, don’t be discouraged. Give yourself a break now and then. Recovery—”

Emma decided she didn’t like that word.

“—takes time. It’s like breaking a leg. Can’t expect to run marathons immediately, now, can you?”

Emma didn’t like how that word implied that she’d broken a bone in her twisted mind somewhere that would just mend with time; because what if she wasn’t simply ‘broken’? What if she’d been messed up from the start? As Killian had described feeling at one point, what if she really was  _defective_? You can’t fix something like that.

She had a limited array of emotions at the moment, and as exhausted as she was, optimism for the bright side was not one of them.

“And, don’t feel nervous about the unit we’re going to. It’s a nice facility and it’s a good time to be going. Not too early, not too late. You’ll have time to be admitted, get your bearings, and then you’ll see your boyfriend in no time after that, I reckon. Visiting hours are around dinner time.”

“What?”

“I said you won’t have to wait long to see your boyfriend.”

“It’s not like that. We’re just friends,” she said quickly. She was never going to see this person again, but she had to clarify. For herself. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

“Oh, well, seems like a pretty good friend in any case.”

“Yeah, he is.” He was the best.

Emma felt the ambulance brake before a sharp turn, then slowly crawl upwards until it came to a final stop.

“We’re here,” the woman smiled.

“Here we go,” Emma muttered under her breath.

* * *

 

The sensation of being moved through a building on her back, around turns and corners, was bizarre. They wheeled her into the biggest elevator she’d ever seen. It accommodated not only her stretcher, the woman who’d kept her company in the ambulance, and the other paramedic holding her duffle bag, but also two people in purple and red scrubs going to the floor above them.

She held her breath most of the ride, trying to calm her racing pulse, from the elevator over to the large beige double doors next to a short desk where someone was already scrambling to let them through. The person with her bag opened one door, the receptionist in scrubs opened the other and soon she was brought into a large room with an office area to the left, some brightly lit hallways on both sides, and a giant sitting room equipped with tables and large windows to a patio area that looked like an enclosed greenhouse.

 _‘So you can’t jump,’_  she thought, a little shaken up.

She saw them, the other patients. Most of them sat, not noticing or bothering to look up while they continued to play their games of Solitare or read their books and magazines. Some stared blankly at the plastic-bubbled balcony outside the sliding door; some glanced over at her, careful not to linger in their stares too long like they didn’t want to be rude. Most wore matching uniforms, plain light blue pants and v-neck shirts. There was a young woman in fuzzy pajama pants similar to her duckling ones, except these were with snowflakes on them, and she walked with an older man who had a light blanket draped over his shoulders. They walked from one blown-up photograph of waterfalls and autumn leaves to the next, leisurely examining them all.

The nurses didn’t even look over at Emma in their rounds.

“Alright,” the paramedic said, wheeling her toward the office area with a long desk, photocopiers, and computer screens. “We can let you down now.” The stretcher dipped low in the front then leveled out in the back, and in less than twenty seconds, Emma was unstrapped and back on her feet.

The woman wished her a quiet ‘good luck’ and the other nodded at her after handing her bag over to someone behind the counter for inspection.

“Emma?” a nurse with curly brown hair and pink scrubs greeted her. “Just have a seat over here. Are you cold? Do you want a blanket?”

She was holding herself, gripping her arms, but only out of nerves. “No, thanks,” she said and sat down in the lone chair at the end of the counter.

“We’re just going to go through some questions. I’ll talk you through hospital procedures, information, and how to report your experience on the unit if you have any suggestions or complaints. Then you’ll sign some forms for me, and we’ll let you get settled in. Should only take fifteen minutes, twenty tops.”

“Okay,” said Emma as nicely as she could then remembered that she probably didn’t even have to bother to pretend to be happy and sociable—not everyone came in here voluntarily, as Killian had said.

Responding in mostly one-worded answers, ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ seemed to suffice for most of them, but god, were there a lot of questions. Most of them didn’t even have anything to do with her mental state like she’d expected them to. They asked if she smoked, if she drank, if she was sexually active, if she did drugs, did she take any medications, was she pregnant, etc..

Sure enough in twenty minutes Emma had signed and initialed papers she didn’t really understand about information disclosures, gun purchasing, behavior contracts, consent to treatment and discharge at her psychiatrist’s approval. But most important was the visitor-approval list where she’d signed ‘Killian Jones’ as neatly as she could so there could be no mistake about letting him in. She signed Elsa’s following it, and after a moment, she hesitantly wrote down David’s just in case.

In a flash, they were taking her blood pressure with a monitored machine on wheels.

The nurse pulled on a cord, attached to it a metal stick, and slid a hard plastic sleeve on top of it.

“Just hold this under your tongue.” Emma gripped it tightly, willing her hand not to shake while the velcroed sleeve they wrapped around her bicep squeezed the life out of her arm. She was scared and everything seemed to be happening so fast. She just tried to be compliant and to keep up, not hinting that everything was slowly becoming one giant over-stimulating cloud of anarchy.

“Your blood pressure’s a little high,” the nurse said. “Nervous? We can take it again in a little while for a better reading.”

While she untangled herself from the equipment, another nurse called Emma’s name from behind her. He held her unzipped and thoroughly searched bag.

“Hello, I’m—” Emma forgot the man’s name as soon as he said it. She’d met too many people that day and as everything threatened to swarm and bleed into one another around her, his name was lost in the struggle to keep her cool. They walked, Emma a couple steps behind him, down one of the lit hallways to the left and passed doors; some closed, others propped open. She could see clean, empty rooms with simple, block-like furniture, but some were so dim it was hard to make out if people were actually lying in the beds. There were no curtains, only blinds which, once she’d entered her own room, she’d discovered were indeed encased between glass panes with knobs at the lower corners to open and shut them.

There were two beds with neatly tucked sheets and single, folded blankets at the foot of each of them. The other side of the room looked unused.

“There’s a vacancy in here, so for now, you have your own room,” said the nurse. “You get to pick which bed you want.”

They both faced away from each other, but she settled for the one around the corner of the L-shaped room. It was tucked to the side where she could keep to herself once someone was assigned. She’d played this game before. She was a former foster kid and knew prime bed real estate when she saw it.

She took the bag from him and emptied its contents on the bed then watched him take back the bag, go over to the closet and drawer built into the wall, and unlock the drawer on the bottom.

“Why is it locked?” she asked.

“To keep your things safe of course. We put all bags in here.”

More like,  _‘Safe from her.’_  She was getting savvy with this whole ‘potential threats’ thing. A bag had straps, and straps could be cut and tied together for makeshift rope. Killian had stressed that ‘strings’ were a no-no.  _‘Who knows—maybe you can suffocate yourself with a duffle bag these days, too,’_  she thought morbidly.

“You have a closet over here,” he said, gesturing to the closet without a rod, but instead, two pivoted hooks that looked like they’d fall down against the mere weight of her winter coat if she’d put it to the test, “and the dresser next to your bed has shampoo, conditioner, lotion, a toothbrush, toothpaste, and a comb. Let’s see, the bathrooms have towels and washcloths. I’d recommend pushing the shower button three times before hopping in to let it heat up—it stays on for about three minutes before you have to push it again. There’s a washer down the hall, just ask a nurse if you need to use it, and if you need anything else, ask the front desk. They have extras of everything.”

“What’s this?” asked Emma, patting the neatly folded powder blue clothes on her dresser, similar to the other patients.

“Shirts and pants, but it looks like they forgot your socks. I’ll go bring those in for you.”

“…Do I have to wear them?”

“No, people who come with their own things wear their own clothes, but a lot of patients have said that they’re quite comfy and prefer them instead.”

 _‘At least they’re not orange,’_  she thought.

“Oh, sorry about the cold. They’re coming to repair the air conditioner soon, but if you need any extra blankets just come ask me or another nurse on the unit.”

“Thank you,” she said, making an effort to smile as convincingly as she could for this nice man. He seemed like a good person to have on your side. He must’ve been new though; he was too nice still.

“Not a problem. This,” he handed her an emerald green folder filled with photocopies of the documents she’d signed and skimmed earlier, “has the program schedule for each day of the week. It tells you when breakfast, lunch, and dinner are. We’ll announce snack times. Morning announcements are in the TV room. There’s exercise and therapy groups depending on which track you’re in—I believe you’re Track B, but I’ll check the board for sure—visiting hours and free time, too.”

“Do I have to do all this stuff?” she wondered, looking at that ‘7:30AM Morning Meeting’ time.

“It’s recommended that you do.”

“And bed time is at ten?” she asked, glancing over the schedule. “What if I can’t sleep?”

“They’ll probably give you a sleeping aid, but between you and me,” he said lowly, “if you’re nice to the night staff, they might let you stay up a little longer to read in the main room. TV’s off at ten though.”

“Good to know.”

“I’ll go grab you some socks and check your Track.” He left her alone in the cold room. Barren and borderline freezing, she fought back the tightness in her chest and the prickling in her eyes because she knew he’d be back any moment. Instead, she focused on putting away her clothes in the two bottom drawers, leaving the top drawer for her toiletries, and the top of the dresser for her folder and schedule.

She changed quickly in her bathroom then came out and stared at her new bed. It reminded her of Killian’s, the pillow broken in and non-fluffy. She missed her own bed. She missed her room, despite it being a prison lately. She sat on the edge, staring at the floor; commanding herself to remain calm, to hold back everything that was threatening to spill out now that she was alone.

“Alrighty, you’re in Track A, actually,” said the nurse after knocking on the door frame. “Here are your socks and I just brought the extra blanket in case.”

“Thanks…”

“I’ll let you get settled in. Someone will come around every fifteen minutes to check on you and you’ll probably meet with your psychiatrist tomorrow.”

“What if I’m sleeping?” she asked, laying out the two blankets out on the twin sized bed.

“They’ll be quiet. It’s just to check where you are on the unit.” He turned back to her at the door. “Want me to close this for you?”

“Yeah. Please.” Her tone was quiet and clipped.

With the click of the door, Emma was finally alone and grateful she didn’t have to share a room with someone else because the unfairness of it all, of having to be there, away from everything she knew and was familiar with, hurt in new ways and some old ways, too. Like the feeling of being in a strange place all alone was familiar. She didn’t know how to process it all. She needed Killian, and according to the clock above the desk in the main room, it’d be a few hours before Killian would come. God, she missed him. It was a miserable, sick feeling. He was always supporting her, that boy, and now she wasn’t allowed to see him except for a single hour in the evening and maybe during lunchtime if he could sneak out of class, but she didn’t want him failing, too. She didn’t want to drag him down just because she’d fallen to rock bottom herself.

… But seriously, what was she doing?

What did she just do to herself? She just willingly admitted herself into a place cut off from Killian and her friends. She  _had_  to be crazy.

“Everything okay there?” a woman with glasses and a clipboard asked from the now open doorway. She hadn’t even heard the click of the bizarre looking door handle, a thick downward pointed lever that you  _pressed_. Everything in this place was a reminder that she was dangerous to herself. The scars on her body made it clear already and now she was trapped in this safety-coated place, too?

“Uh, yeah, I’m good,” croaked Emma. She’d been spacing out and fueling her misery for a full fifteen minutes. Time was strange there. The woman left Emma sitting on the bed alone again.

She always hated herself for being self-pitying which was why she ran over to the windows and turned the knobs as far as they would go, shrouding the room in darkness, and crawled into bed, shutting out the rest of the light with a blanket over her head.

Her eyes stung with abandonment and loneliness. There was no way to even contact him without her phone. She was stuck. Stuck in life and now stuck in this place. She started to cry, pulled the blanket up over her head, and waited for the next fifteen minute check to pass.

When the same nurse silently peeked around the corner of the bathroom to Emma’s ‘sleeping’ figure, only visible in the glow from the hallway, and closed the door quietly, Emma let out a shaky breath and heaved again.

She did this every fifteen minutes; cried until it hurt her chest, silently begging some higher power to ease the horrible things existing inside her, to calm the sadness that ate at her little bit of hope. Then she’d hear the soft knock on the door and hold her breath, waiting for the woman to write on her clipboard again that she was alive and safe, and leave her in darkness once more.

Eventually, something took pity on her and granted her sleep. No more sobs. No more pain aching inside of her. No more thinking about the dampness of her pillow or the claustrophobic heat from her hot breaths under those blankets. No more of this nightmare of a day.

Everything was gone, including her desperation to beg the staff to let Killian in to see her earlier. She slept dreamlessly, waiting for the hours to pass.

* * *

 

“Emma?” someone called her.

It wasn’t Killian. She contemplated ignoring it, but they kept on going insistently.

“Yes?” she finally answered hoarsely.

“It’s dinner time,” the person said and let her door fall shut again.

It was really dark outside now. She could see the bluish tint of twilight poking through the blinds. Inside the bathroom, she stared at herself in the mirror. Her eyes weren’t bloodshot, a miracle for all the crying she’d done, but she must’ve really been out of it.

“6:00PM Dinner” the schedule read. She’d been asleep for hours.

Hesitantly, she walked outside into the hallway and followed the commotion in that first room she’d been wheeled into. People had cleared their tables of cards and books and now had trays with steaming lidded plastic mugs and lidded plates. It reminded her of the safety-version of those silver platters with the fancy lids that butlers lifted to reveal fabulous roasts underneath. She wasn’t expecting a roast here.

“Oh, you’re new,” said the woman standing by a giant cart with rows and rows of trays. “Your name?”

“Emma Swan?” she replied with uncertainty for dinner protocol. No one had walked her through this part.

“Is this your first day?” the woman asked after checking the printed receipts of each tray. They had the meal contents listed and patients’ names in bold on top.

“Yeah… Sorry.”

“Oh, don’t apologize for anything. Here’s what you do. After you’re done eating, go up to the front desk and ask for the menu form. You just fill out everything you want for the next day and we’ll bring it tomorrow, okay? In the meantime, we have extras—would you like pasta or fish?”

“Uh, pasta… Please.”

“Alright, here you are. Enjoy,” she said, giving Emma one last smile before greeting another patient by name. “Already have yours right here, Rudy—”

Emma turned around with her tray and surveyed the area for a free table. She saw one in the back corner, but as she moved towards it, an older woman with a walker, and a nurse holding her tray for her, sat down first.

She could’ve asked to sit with someone, but the intimidation of feeling like the new girl on her first day of middle school hit her all over again. She spotted the sitting area and how the people who sat in the lounge chairs silently ate their food. She wouldn’t mind silence while she tried to figure this all out.

Moving to the chair furthest in the room, she sat, facing the balcony. The city lights in the dark night were calming, and when she’d settled in and lifted the lid off her plate, she felt comforted knowing that this place had decent food.

She learned that the mug with the plastic soda fountain drink lid on top held hot water for the little tea bag of caffeine-free chamomile beside it. There was a container of cranberry juice, a warm roll of bread, wrapped butter, honey, sugar, salt and pepper packets—this was  _way_  nicer than what she’d imagined, not to mention some of the ‘meals’ she’d grown up on.

As she ate, taking her time instead of scarfing it down like she usually would, she became more relaxed and reassured, glancing up at the clock with anticipation rather than worry. Killian would be there in half an hour. She could make it thirty minutes if she kept herself busy, so she intently sipped her hot tea and watched the rush hour traffic on the busy streets below. When she looked back up, only ten minutes remained.

Emma watched carefully what the other patients were doing. The racks where they’d gotten their meals from had been cleared of full trays and filled up with used, empty ones. She followed suit, waiting next to another woman with hands decked out in rings. The nurse earlier had called her ‘Rudy.’ Rudy glanced over at Emma and asked in a soft voice, “I didn’t order hot water, but they gave me tea anyway. Do you want it?”

It was the first time someone other than a nurse had spoken to her there and Emma tried not to gape.

“No, thanks. I’m pretty full.”

“They give a lot of food here, don’t they? I keep thinking, ‘Oh, no, I’m gaining weight!’ but the nurses let me check and  _nothing_. I’m exactly the same.”

“Sounds like good nutrition.”

“I definitely eat healthier here than I do at home,” said Rudy as she walked away.

Emma replaced her tray, too, then turned around and saw Rudy walk around the corner to where a TV blared out into the hallway. Another two patients filled out a long form with miniature pencils at the front desk.

 _‘Right. The menus,’_  thought Emma. It was simple enough. There was a basket with new menus and blank checkboxes, a cup of pencils, and a box with filled out ones.

She looked through the pile, but couldn’t find her name and had to ask a nurse to help her. They printed one with her name at the top and she began to check each group for Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner. For breakfast, she checked toast and apple-cinnamon oatmeal (to her disappointment, coffees and teas were all non-caffeinated). For lunch, she chose a noodle stir-fry, a roll, and raspberry-cranberry juice. Lastly, for dinner, she picked the pasta again, orange sherbet, and hot tea (peppermint).

It was like a restaurant and she almost wanted to laugh, unable to keep the content smile from her face. Something about good food always brought relief to her. Food was part of the reason why she and David became such good friends—his mother always invited her over for good home-cooked meals. Absorbed in her new task, she hadn’t even realized the trickle of visitors from the outside lobby coming in.

“Whatcha doing there, love?” a familiar, lovely voice asked her. It took all her self-control not to tackle him into a hug. He settled in next to her, shoulder to shoulder, and read over her selection. “An extra _decaf_  coffee for breakfast? Swan, no matter how much decaf you drink, it’s not going to give you a caffeine buzz, you know this, right?”

“Maybe I can trick myself into thinking it has caffeine. Like a placebo effect.”

“Placebos work when you don’t know if it’s decaf. This is just straight denial.”

She missed this, she missed him. Tossing her menu and pencil in the ‘Completed’ box, she threw her arms around him.

“Whoa there,” he laughed. Her hold on him was mercilessly strong. “I missed you, too.”

“I like the food.”

“That’s good.”

“I don’t like anything else.”

“Oh…” They immediately left the desk and went out to the darkened patio. She hadn’t been out there yet, but there were benches and circular concrete tables with built-in checkered boards in the center of them. He sat her down on a bench farthest from prying eyes. “How’re you holding up, love?”

She gave a short laugh, a bitter one. “I cried and passed out then woke up to food, so I’m a little conflicted about the whole thing,” she said with humor in her voice to deflect from the truth which was that she was terrified about what she’d signed up for. “I just… I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t know what I got myself into.”

“Did you meet with your doctor yet?”

“No, they said she’ll be in tomorrow.”

“It’ll feel a little aimless until then because that’s when a lot of the initial work gets done, but this is a place to just relax and enjoy the calm. They have a schedule, right?”

“Yes.”

“Stick to it for the first few days, do everything it says and you’ll feel better when there’s a system. I know you, Emma. You don’t like unorganized chaos, so stay organized until you meet with your doctor.”

“I did miss the my Track A class, program, whatever it’s called while I was sleeping… and I heard some people at dinner talking about tossing around a stress ball and saying their favorite superpower.”

“Nothing says more about a person than their own superpower. But, see? Now no one’s going to know that you want to fly and shoot blasts from your hands like Iron Man. Go to the next one.”

“There’s one in the morning, but it’s at 7:30AM.”

“They won’t let you stay up late anyway.”

“Not necessarily. One of the nurses told me that if I get in good with the night staff, they’ll let me stay up.”

“Already breaking the rules and it’s not even a first full day.” She was giggling when the realization that their only hour together was ticking away as they joked. She began falling deep into her own mind. “Hey,” he called to her. “Get out of there.”

“It’s so hard though,” she groaned. “There’s too much silence here. Everything in my head is just running rampant.”

“It’ll get easier, Emma. I promise,” he said, squeezing her hand. “It just takes a little time and it’s only been four hours. Follow the program, read your books, call me—”

“Wait… There’s a phone?”

“Of course there is. Speaking of…” He fished around in his pocket until he found a folded piece of paper with three numbers scrawled on it. “Mine, Elsa’s, and David’s—if you ever forget our numbers.”

“You’re the best,” she smiled, ecstatic that she  _did_  have a connection to the outside world.

“And I’ll get the unit’s number before I go so I can call you, too. But you have to be awake to get my calls, you know.”

“I’m sure they’ll just wake me up,” she said stubbornly.

“ _Emma._ ”

“ _Fine._  I’ll be up. I’ll do my programs.”

“Good,” he said. “Oh, and I’m skipping class tomorrow, so I’ll come over at lunch, too.”

“Please,” she laughed. “I know very well that your Statistics class is tomorrow and that I’m simply an excuse.”

“Your point?”

“No point,” she said quickly. “I’d keep you here all day and night if it were up to me.”

“I’d gladly stay if I could. We could play cards and lounge in pajamas all day long.”

“Why couldn’t we go crazy at the same time?”

“You’re not crazy, Emma. You’re just going through a lot and need a break.”

“A break,” she repeated.

“A break from having to take care of yourself all on your own. Let someone else be responsible for once. The only thing you need to do here is eat pudding snacks, take naps, and drag yourself out of bed for programs every now and then.”

“I don’t know how I’m going to do this for a week, Killian. What if they keep me longer? I don’t understand this place. I can’t stand myself, let alone in the quiet. I’ll really go insane.”

“It’ll be alright, Swan. It’s only your first day. Have you found the TV room yet?”

“No. I went straight to my room and didn’t come out.”

“Grab a blanket and go curl up on one of the couches. Hopefully no one forces everyone to watch the news or science channel.”

She laughed, and for the rest of their hour, she listened to him give her tips, reassure her everything was going to be okay, and enjoyed the feel of being tucked up against him. It was cold on the balcony, the winter season still lingering in the night air, but that wasn’t why they were so close. He was her compass; he’d been since the moment they met, always trying to direct her in the right direction which is why she asked him about David.

“He’s going to wonder why I’m not at my dorm or answering his texts.”

“Well… If you want to keep this all hush-hush, I sort of, maybe, snuck in your phone for you to check.”

“I love you.” She meant it as a joke, but it didn’t feel like it after she’d said it. If he was weirded out by anything, he didn’t show it.

“How could you not? I’m a rule breaker and totally charming,” he said without skipping a beat.

“It’s adorable how full of yourself you are sometimes.”

“I am many things, but ‘adorable’ isn’t one of them.”

“Not masculine enough for  _the_  Killian Jones?” she teased.

“Nope.”

“Unfortunately, your bad boy swagger doesn’t work on me. I’ve seen what you’re like when you wake up in the morning. Like a little bunny. It’s adorable.”

“I want you to cheer up, but not at the expense of my ego.”

“Enough about you—give me my phone,” she whispered as if everyone would be able to hear them from inside the building.

“Fine, but turn the brightness low so they don’t see.”

She unlocked her phone and the familiarity of her screen filled her with relief, but it was quickly replaced with a sigh of the lies she would have to tell. David was already texting her.

 _‘I haven’t seen you around. Are you okay?’_  texted David.

 _‘I’m outside your room, you there?’_  he asked again.

 _‘Elsa said you’re with Jones. Why aren’t you answering?’_ She could nearly hear the panic in his text.

“Fuck. What do I say to him?”

“You really don’t want to tell him the truth?”

“I do. Just not yet. I put him on my visitors list, but I want to meet with that doctor and see what I’m up against first, you know?”

“Just tell him you’re fine and for you two to meet up this weekend. That way it’s not a lie and he’ll back off and wait for your plans. By Sunday, I have no doubt you’ll feel better. You’re already better than you were last night.”

“Yeah?”

“Your eyes don’t look as bothered.”

“Eyes are the windows to the soul; I bet it’s still wrecked in here.”

“Troubled or not, they’re still pretty to look at.”

She smirked at him. Always the charmer. “Alright,” she breathed. “Let’s do this…”

‘ _Hey David. Sorry I’ve been MIA. Really busy with work and school.‘_

She paused. Okay that was a boldfaced lie.

‘— _Can’t meet up right now. Can we do lunch on Sunday?’_

“Okay, done.”

Her phone chimed almost immediately and she buried it into her shirt and stomach to muffle the noise.

“Shit. I forgot to put it on silence.”

“What’d he say?” asked Killian

“ _’Awesome. Your pick, okay?’_  Well, he’s in for a surprise. I bet he’s not expecting hospital food.”

“He really calls me by my last name when you two talk?” He rolled his eyes.

“He’s just mad because I spend more time with you than him, but I don’t always want to hang out with his girlfriend.”

“Snow White,” as they nicknamed, “is a bit of a control freak, I’ll admit, but she’s not all that bad.”

“We’ll see. Her true colors will show when David tells her I’m locked up in here.”

“You think he’ll tell?”

“I wouldn’t want him to keep it a secret anyway. That’s not fair to them.”

“Always so considerate,” said Killian, shaking his head slightly.

“I just get it. You don’t keep secrets like that when you’re with someone.”

He didn’t answer back, but rather stared ahead with an expression she couldn’t quite place her finger on.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Me? Yes. No complaints.”

“Come on.”

“I’m just really glad that you trusted me with all this. That’s all.”

It was one of those moments when Emma felt like she was drifting along uncharted waters. She couldn’t get a read on what was really going on in his head and she was frustrated because it was so easy for him to figure her out when he wanted to. What was he thinking? Was he thinking the same thing as her? The same thing that popped into her head from time to time when she wasn’t trying so hard to bury it? About them being a team, too?

“You’ve been so great to me… I’m not great at picking out the right words. I don’t trust anyone else like I trust you, Killian, and you earned that.”

Still, he was unreadable. The conflict in his expression, his clenched jaw, you’d think she’d said the opposite, but his eyes were so bright and vulnerable that she knew better. He was battling with himself. Then in moment of reckless courage, a split second later, he opened his mouth to say something, the struggle suddenly gone and an uncertainty in its place.

“After they release you, do you think, maybe we could—”

“Visiting hours are over!” a nurse called from inside. “Visiting hours are over,” he said again, poking his head around the glass door at them. Luckily the hand holding her phone had fallen to her side, keeping it successfully out of sight. Killian slyly reached for it and stuffed it back into his jacket pocket.

“Would I what?” asked Emma.

“Um,” he paused and shook the mysterious thought out of his head, “the march,” he lied. “Do you think you’d still want to do the march? It’s in a few weeks, but we don’t have to if you aren’t up for it. I’ll bail, too, if you want.”

She tried to mask her frustration, easier in the shadows where they sat. That’s not what he was going to ask her. She pushed away her disappointment, enjoying the last few minutes she had with him for the night.

“I’ll think about it. I don’t really know what I’m up for right now.”

“I get it. Well... I guess I have to head out for the night, that nurse is staring me down right now.”

“She probably just thinks you’re cute.”

“I am rather handsome.”

“My god,” she laughed, shoving him in the shoulder.

As they walked through the makeshift living and dining room, she noticed that some of the patients were still engrossed in their reading or keeping one another company. They didn’t get visitors, but found comfort in one another. She wondered if she would ever be that friendly to anyone there.

Emma also noticed the way a group of women were glancing over at her and Killian with curious expressions. One of them, an old gray-haired woman, giggled at something a girl with a mess of red hair said.

Killian signed out, his signature so elegant looking, but indecipherable amongst the others before his—future ‘doctor handwriting’ she always teased—and walked with her over to the door, the threshold between the real world and this place with its carefully fabricated relaxation, scenic pictures, and green and blue color scheme.

“I’ll see you tomorrow at one o’clock,” he promised her.

“I’ll be waiting,” she sighed.

“It’ll be okay, love. Start your book and just keep yourself distracted, okay?”

“I’ll try,” she mumbled.

“No pouting. Now, go line up. Looks like they’re giving out ice cream cups,” he gestured behind her. Sure enough, patients were coming out of the woodwork for vanilla cups swirled with chocolate syrup or strawberry sauce. The strawberry looked really good and instantaneously her stomach began to ache as if she hadn’t just eaten a load of pasta an hour before. “Do you want me to bring Elsa tomorrow?”

“Not yet. Just give me another day or two.”

“No rush, darling. It’s your vacation.”

“Ha,” she laughed dryly.

He pulled her to him and hugged her tightly. “Just make it to lunch and I’ll be here afterwards.”

“Good night, Killian.”

“G’night, Swan.” He reluctantly let go and backed up to the double doors being held open by an impatient nurse on one side and the jolliest nurse on staff holding the other side who wished him a good night.

He flashed her one last dazzling smile then the doors closed and she felt lost again.

“Snack time!” a nurse in beige pinstriped scrubs announced. The line had shortened significantly and Emma reminded herself,  _‘Right, ice cream. Get ice cream then get a book.’_

He was right, she didn’t like unorganized chaos, but Killian’s visiting hours gave her a semblance of order because in her world, seeing Killian was a norm. She might not see him a whole lot while in here, but still, she was calmed by the fact that he’d be back again.

As she waited in line, one step closer and closer to her ice cream, she felt more at peace with her environment. She felt even better when the nurse offered her both the chocolate and strawberry because they had extras of both.

She raced back to her room for her book, careful to hide the two small tubs in her hands because she was sure food wasn’t allowed, and once she settled on starting a mystery novel about a killer who left tarot cards by their victims, she made her way back to the common area and took up one of the empty tables in the corner.

And the miraculous happened—she lost herself in the story of a detective named Jane Ellsworth with a mysterious connection to the killer, the sugary swirls of her sundae cups, and the light noise of shuffling cards, fax machines, and quiet conversations between the other patients.

When 10:00PM rolled around, she had hardly felt all that time creep up on her. The only real evidence was the hefty amount of pages she’d gone through, and when the nurse came over to check on her, she asked as nicely as she could if she could stay up a little longer to read and that she’d napped so much earlier.

The nurse didn’t look convinced to let her stay up passed bed time, but when asking someone from the graveyard shift who was taking off his scarf, she heard, “Oh yeah, that’s fine,” and watched him give her a smile and a thumbs up. He must’ve known from the look of her that she was new and asked as much when he came by later to check in on her.

“How’s your first day?”

“Good,” she said, her voice a little too high-pitched to be truthful.

“It’s overwhelming.”

She sighed, placing her book down, “Yes. Very. I’m trying though.”

“Well, I’m working through the weekend, and as long as I’m around, you can stay up and read. We just can’t give you any medication for sleep until you meet with your doctor.”

“That’s fine.”

“Chin up, though. I’m being honest; you look a lot better than some of the patients we get in on their first day.”

“My friend gave me a major pep talk.”

“Good friend.”

“The best.”

“Want some tea or something?”

“That’d be great actually.”

“Peppermint, chamomile, lemon, or apple cinnamon?”

“All decaf here, huh?”

“Caffeine isn’t very good for you.”

“I saw you sporting an energy drink when you came in.”

“I work graveyards, cut me some slack,” he laughed.

“It’s only tough in the mornings, really.”

“Ah, you’ll be fine in a couple days. You’ll balance out. Order orange juice with your meals, vitamin C is a good substitute. So, peppermint?”

He brought her hot water from the snack room. She’d spotted a fridge, a microwave, and cabinets of tea boxes, powder creamer, and popcorn in there earlier. She decided that the snack room was her favorite place so far, but her little table overlooking the same street she’d stared at during dinner was high up on her list, too.

Being in the empty room, the lights all dimmed for the night, allowed her to feel out the environment at her own speed. She grew more comfortable with the place and as she read, waiting for the first yawn to signal it was time to try to sleep, she found herself growing used to the idea of maybe finding ways to enjoy her time there.

And maybe if she batted her eyelashes enough, Killian would sneak her a portable charger and her phone for her to keep. (All the outlets had a special locking mechanism on them.) And, it’s not like she had a roommate. She could get away with it in the mean time.

That way she could text him, maybe call him from the bathroom and press the shower button to mask the giggles she would no doubt have while rebelling and talking to him. But that depended on if she could get her ‘rule breaker’ to bend because sometimes he was as rigid as his military man of a brother.

Halfway through her book, she felt her first yawn rise up, and by the end of the chapter, a few more had snuck their way up, too. She said goodnight to the graveyard staff and quietly padded down the carpeted hall to her room. This time when she curled up on the foreign bed with its strange thin, yet surprisingly warm blankets and chilly air, she didn’t feel the urge to cry, but she wasn’t ready to smile either.

Day one was officially complete. Meeting with the doctor to discuss her stay was next, but for now, sleep called her.

* * *

 

So, she missed the Morning Meeting, but woke up when a nurse came in to tell her breakfast was ready. However, before she even made it to the dining room, she was stopped at a small little nook filled with high-tech drawers that opened automatically to dispense what looked like hundreds of different types of pills in containers neatly nestled in each compartment.

“No medication yet for you,” a nurse said and gestured for her to sit down on the chair next to the blood pressure machine. “Good, your blood pressure is down now. 120/81, near perfect. And, hold this under your tongue.”

She was going to have to get used to doing this every morning, but again, the structure felt good. Once the monitor beeped and she was all written down, Emma was dismissed and slowly walked over to the main room, wondering for a moment whether she should have changed into day clothes. However, everyone was either in their blue uniforms or sweat pants which was fine by her. Her skin was still sensitive and even the brush of her cotton sweats felt uncomfortable once in a while. She tugged on her sleeves self-consciously. She was so used to rolling them up to her elbows, but she took away her option to do that when she attacked herself there, too.

“Name?” a new face asked her.

“Emma Swan.” The woman, a different one from last night—a morning shift nurse, scanned the receipts hanging off the trays. She did it so quickly and found Emma’s near the bottom of the rack.

“Here you go,” she smiled.

Like the day before, Emma walked over to the plush chair facing the window and buildings now alive with activity. She could see people in white and black attire pacing the offices across from the unit with thick stacks of files and folders. She liked people watching, but wondered if any of those employees knew that the people over in her unit were psychiatric patients. They had to; there were too many people in blue sitting outside in the sun with their breakfasts on the tables and wooden benches where she and Killian had snuck off to the night before.

She pulled back the small lid to her bowl and a steam of cinnamon and apples spiraled up. She burned her tongue in impatience, but soothed it with a little bit of buttered toast. Meals and snack times were definitely the second to best things there; Killian visiting being the first, of course.

The only thing that sucked monumentally was the bitter decaf coffee, but she pounded it back black, no sugar, and then the next hoping for a caffeine buzz. For a second, she thought she felt it, but resigned to it being all in her head like everything else.

She was almost done with her breakfast when an older woman with a platinum bob and bold black glasses sat down next to her. She wasn’t wearing scrubs, so at first Emma thought she was another patient, but the woman was looking straight at her.

Emma stared back in confusion until the woman introduced herself.

“Emma?” Emma couldn’t even nod in time to her inquiry before the woman continued. “I’m Dr. Talbot. I hear you’ve had a smooth transition into the unit.”

Again, Emma might as well have not said, ‘Yes,’ because the woman went on without pause. She knew her type, this doctor, and wasn’t sure about working with a human steam roller.

“So, how have you been getting along?”

Emma waited a fraction of a second to see if it was finally her turn to speak then cleared her throat, “I’m adjusting still.”

“That’s perfectly alright. I know this is all new. Is this your first time admitted somewhere?”

People came back? Like repeat offenders? “Yeah, I’ve never been to a place like this.”

“Okay, well, let me explain how this all works. I’ll be meeting to check up on you, how you’re doing, and we’ll adjust medications according to your progress. You should be out of here when things turn up.”

“Medication, I have to take pills?”

“Once you’re finished with your breakfast we can go speak in one of the conference rooms.”

“I’m done,” she said, her appetite suddenly seized up.

“Good. Shall we?”

Emma loaded her tray back into the cart and turned around to follow Dr. Talbot into another hall with room after room filled with patients, doctors, and even, from the looks of it, families. The windows on the sides of the doors only afforded her glimpses, but she gathered that this is where the real business took place.

“This one looks like it should be good,” said Dr. Talbot and unlocked the room with her key card.

It was a small room, like a waiting room without the outdated magazines. There were little end tables and chairs all facing each other. It was kind of cramped with excess chairs and Emma didn’t like feeling trapped in small spaces, but she followed Dr. Talbot’s suit and took a seat across from her.

“So, Emma,” the woman began, “I hear you came in with thoughts of suicide and a practice of self-harming.”

Wow. Straight to it then. “…Yes.”

“Have the thoughts ceased at all since coming?”

“A little.”

“I see, and have you self-harmed since arriving?”

“No. I mean, it’s not like there’s much to work with here anyway. There aren’t even staples in the pages you guys gave me.”

Dr. Talbot just stared blankly. Emma felt uncomfortable under her stare. Her frankness was usually a humorous icebreaker, but clearly not here.

“Can you describe to me how your moods have been like—how long have you felt depressed?”

“I’ve always kind of had bad moods, but lately—the last year, I can’t shake them. They last longer and by the time I’m out of it, I’ve messed up everything and have to start all over.”

“What sort of things do you ‘mess up?’”

“Just life, my resposibilities. I’ll forget to pay bills, lose all my motivation to keep up in class. All I want to do is sleep and sometimes I can’t even do that right.”

“Insomnia?”

“I sleep too much or can’t sleep enough.”

“I see,” she said again. “And do you self-harm mostly when you’re feeling depressed?”

“Yes, but—I mean, sometimes, it’s like I do it because I’m nervous—”

“Anxious?”

“Exactly. It makes me feel better.”

“It’s a distraction. A redirection of your anxiety.”

Dr. Talbot had come off as kind of abrupt in the beginning and she wasn’t the most charismatic like some of the nurses there, but she understood effortlessly. She must’ve dealt with patients like Emma every day and in a way, it comforted her knowing that she wasn’t the odd patient out. There really were people like her out there who had gotten help before, and Dr. Talbot knew the dance.

“And how long would you say the duration of these depressive episodes usually lasts? A week? Two?”

“It depends. Sometimes it’s a few days and I get over it. The longest I’ve felt horrible was for a month.”

“That is concerning. It’s a little hard to keep everything running smoothly when your moods are against you.”

“I’d say you have no idea, but it seems like you do,” retorted Emma, and Dr. Talbot gave her an amused half-smile.

 _‘Now that’s progress,’_  thought Emma.

“So, here’s what we’re going to do. Since you just had breakfast, I’m going to send you over to the dispensary. We’ll start you on a lower dose of fluoxetine, 10 mg, and we’ll observe any changes in your moods from there. Tomorrow, we’ll increase it to 20mg and wait to see if we have the right balance. It’s an SSRI—an anti-depressant, but you’ll find it may help with any anxiety you may experience, too. But, if you feel your anxiety is overwhelming you to the point where you feel the need to self-harm, talk to a nurse and tell them immediately. I’m also putting you on an anti-anxiety medication called lorazepam—‘as needed.’ Don’t hesitate to ask the nurses here for help. It’s their job.”

“Is… Are pills really necessary?”

“Emma, there’s nothing wrong with medication. A synergistic combination of medication and talk therapy is the best treatment approach you can take. Let’s just try this for now while you’re here in our care and we’ll see if there are any changes.”

That argument was over. Emma conceded to medication, itching for Killian to get there so she could talk to him about it. Yes, therapy, she was prepared for. Dolores had even made it appealing, but medication? SSRI, anti-this, anti-that. It sounded crazy, too crazy.

‘ _But nothing else has been working,’_  a voice of reason chimed. It was true. She’d been struggling over a year without any treatment at all and look how close she’d wound up to giving up completely. Maybe this was the next step to turning her life around.

“The physician is going to call you in later to take a look at you. Probably expect her in the afternoon.”

Dr. Talbot walked her over to the dispensary where she verbally gave her new prescription for Emma. 10 mg of fluoxetine with breakfast in the mornings; 5 mg of lorazepam as needed. The nurse inside the tiny, windowed room—with only enough space to stand and back up for those automatically unlocking and locking trays under the computer, typed in the orders. In a few swoops on the keyboard, one of the twelve trays popped open and revealed inside pills of all colors, shapes, and sizes.

Emma saw a particularly big pill, round and peach colored, but the one they gave her inside a little paper cup, the same ones that she used for ketchup at her and Killian’s favorite burger spot, was small, oval, and bright white.

“Here you are,” the nurse said, handing her a small Dixie cup of water. “And how’s your anxiety right now?”

Dr. Talbot had already left without a good-bye. She was all business, but Emma was fine with that. Once dismissed, she fetched her book and read inside her room for an hour until her Track was called to meet in the TV room.

* * *

 

“My name is Camilla and I’m the on-staff occupational therapist here,” she said with one of those happy voices that drew out the sounds of words like  _‘Cami—i—illa.’_  “So, first, we’re going to pass this ball around the room,” the infamous stress ball Emma had heard about yesterday, “…and introduce ourselves. How about we say what our favorite movie is while we’re at it, and then we can begin with some light ‘visualization’—“

What the hell was that?

“—So, who wants to start us off?”

Everyone was quiet. Track A consisted of an old man with a gray handlebar mustache that looked as impassive as someone playing poker, a woman with a dazed look in her eyes, a couple of people closer to her age that looked tired but willing to participate, a few other faces that she’d seen in the common area mostly talking or playing cards, and lastly the dark-haired woman ‘Rudy’ who had offered Emma her tea.

Rudy raised her hand up for the stress ball.

“I’ll start,” she said, and caught the ball with both hands. “My name is Rudy and my favorite movie is  _Sixteen Candles_.”

There was a murmur of agreement from some of the ladies and, surprisingly, the man with the handlebar mustache.

“Thanks for starting us out, Rudy! Pass it to anyone in the circle.” Rudy scanned the room and when her eyes fell on Emma, she smiled and signaled for her to catch it.

Luckily, it was a perfect toss and landed right into Emma’s palm.

“Hi, I’m Emma—”

“Oh, like my daughter,” a woman with a blonde pixie cut shorter than Mary Margaret’s said.

“And, my favorite movie is  _Anchorman_.”

“ _Heeey_ ,” one of the girls around her age laughed. “ _’Stay classy, San Diego,’_ ” she quoted. Emma wanted to laugh; her accent paired with the line was too comical. Emma smiled as Camilla told her to pass it to someone else.

Emma made eye contact with the mustache-man and threw it to him. It went a little off course, but without blinking, his arm shot out and caught it in an instant. She breathed a sigh of relief.

“My name’s Jim,” he said, “and I like  _The Big Lebowski_.” He tossed it to the girl who’d quoted Emma’s movie pick.

“You all have good taste in films. We’ll have to put on a film night, Camilla,” the girl said. She had wild, red hair, carefully crafted into a bulky braid and wore a teal plaid shirt. Wisps flew around her face when she moved her head side to side, and her accent was unmistakably Scottish. “I’m Merida, as most of you already know. And my favorite film’s  _Dodgeball_.”

“’ _If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball,_ ’” quoted Emma perfectly.

“Ha!” grinned Merida. “I like you, Emma. Alright, where’s my partner in crime. Go long,” she called and threw it at a young woman with long, jet black hair, half pulled back and held together with a comb emblazoned with an ivory magnolia.

Her name was Mulan and she spoke strongly though she missed the colorful lilt of her louder friend. There were more introductions and by the time they were done, almost ten minutes had passed. However, in their fun of sharing movies, no one seemed to mind the time.

“Visualization,” began Camilla, after everyone was finished and the ball had been returned to her, “is very useful in gathering your focus when things feel scattered. It can also help with goals—envisioning the future, and lowering stress and tension.”

“So, it’s meditation then,” said Merida.

“Meditation involves clearing the mind of all thoughts, but in guided visualization, we’re going to focus on imagery that can evoke the senses for a positive outcome. So, everybody get into a comfortable position in your chairs and close your eyes.”

Emma looked to Merida and saw that the red-head was already sitting, arms crossed, with her head tilted down. Even gruff old Jim already had his eyes closed. Everyone was being surprisingly receptive, and if they were all giving it a shot, then Emma figured she should as well.

Camilla’s voice grew softer and slower. “Imagine the tension in your body moving  _down, down, down_. All that tension in your face, in your shoulders, feel it sinking, and leaving your body as your muscles relax—”

And, so on the session went. Emma visualized mountains, willed herself to smell pine and feel the crisp air surrounding her on the trail (the broken heater in the unit helped with that crisp air bit), and she measured her breathing. In, out; breathe in, breathe out.

She relaxed her body even more every time Camilla told her to; imagined the light from the sun filtering through the trees and filling up the corners of her mind and spreading throughout her body, her arms and legs, fingers and toes.

She heard birds singing and breezes blowing, the leaves and trees rattling with each gust. She visualized herself walking and breathing in sync. Step and breathe in, 2, 3, 4—step and hold, 2, 3—step and exhale, 2, 3, 4, 5…

Over and over again, Camilla chanted it, and Emma felt herself gliding through this place of relaxation. When Camilla finally said, “Alright. Good job, guys,” Emma felt lost in her surroundings. She was back in the hospital and had to blink a few times like everyone else, still regaining themselves after taking in the perfect forests and mountain peaks, each trail uniquely tailored to their own minds.

Merida still had her eyes closed, lost in a place she didn’t want to leave. Mulan was already helping Camilla stack folding chairs and move the couches back further into the corners. Emma left the room, walking as if in a daze, suddenly appreciating the soft, revitalizing color scheme around her.

“Hey, Ron,” Merida’s voice rang in the hall.

Emma stopped and glanced over her shoulder. She was looking straight at her. “What?”

“Ron Burgundy? Anchorman. I know your name is Emma, I was just trying to be funny,” she said, walking alongside Mulan over to her.

“Oh, yeah, sorry, I’m still out of it.”

“Yes, that was… interesting,” said Mulan.

“Loved it. Reminded me of home,” sighed Merida.

“And where’s that?” asked Emma.

“Right now, a little town in the mountains. Before that, a little town in the mountains across the pond.”

“’Across the pond,’” chuckled Emma. “My friend uses that expression, too.”

“Ah, wouldn’t happen to be that guy who stopped by yesterday, would it?”

“Yeah, that’s the Brit.”

“They’re passing out popcorn in the main room,” said Mulan, leading them away from the crowded hallway. It was time for Track B to do exercise in the TV room.

“You’ve already gotten names, but Emma this is Mulan. She’s amazing. You should see her during exercise; 45 push-ups in the minute. No one even bothers to do the real thing except for her. Over-achiever.”

“Stop, you’re making me blush,” said Mulan, rolling her eyes, but smiling a little all the same.

“How long have you been here?” asked Emma, but then she regretted it and quickly added, “Sorry, you don’t have to answer that if—”

“Don’t apologize, it’s not a big deal,” answered Merida.

 _‘Not a big deal, seriously?’_  thought Emma.

“It’s been about a week for me, but I don’t see the end in sight.”

“Four days,” replied Mulan. “My doctor still thinks I’m isolating myself. He doesn’t want to let me go yet.”

“They can do that because of something like that?” asked Emma in shock.

“Oh yeah,” Merida chimed in. “If the nurses report that you’re in your room all day, you’ll never get out. They want to see you socializing and doing the daily rounds.” Merida handed her a bag of popcorn from the nurse at the snack station. “Stick with me and you’ll be out probably before I get to leave.”

Emma was serious about taking her advice. Suddenly, she realized why everyone hung out in the common area—they were proving that they were functional enough to leave. Merida was sociable and Emma respected Mulan’s reservation; hanging out with them wouldn’t be a problem.

* * *

 

Merida told fantastic stories that could only happen when you lived out of the city. She told stories of her hunting trips with her father before he died, about her mother’s lessons about being a proper lady, and being the oldest of her brothers, three triplets always into trouble and barely controllable. Merida’s demon was pressure; she had pressure to help provide for her family, to be the man of the house while at the same time being the young woman her mother expected her to be. Emma could tell that for all the quick witticisms and one-liners, she was hard on herself and very serious.

Mulan remained a mystery though. She offered no stories of her past, but Emma knew heartbreak when she saw it. She’d seen the expression on her favorite foster mother’s face so many times after she knew her husband wasn’t coming home late because he was ‘stuck at the office.’

The only thing she knew for sure was what Mulan had said about coming to the hospital.

“I was just trying to be pro-active. Things felt like they were shifting in a wrong direction and I wanted to nip it in the bud before it blossomed into something else.”

“That’s way better than me. I let it blossom and wilt before I decided to come here,” mumbled Emma.

“Not true. If you decided to come, then you didn’t let anything wilt. Wilting is what you do when you really give up. But if my boyfriend was a looker like yours, I think I’d be a little more pro-active, too.”

“Merida,” laughed Mulan.

“He’s not my boyfriend,” said Emma quickly.

“Oh, is that so?” Merida lifted an eyebrow.

Emma must’ve looked alarmed that maybe her words had turned into an invitation for the cute red-head to move in on her non-boyfriend boy friend because Mulan shook her head and said, “Don’t worry. She won’t go after him. Merida plays for the other team.”

“I don’t play for any team. I have no time for games. I play for my team, if anything,” she laughed. “Team Merida.”

They both laughed at her and finished their popcorn, discussing everyone’s favorite movies again.

“I was surprised with Jim,” said Merida, tossing a piece of popcorn into her mouth. “Big Lebowski? No way, I thought it’d be the  _Godfather_  or something like that.”

“He’s serious, but he’s actually pretty sweet once you get to know him,” Mulan added.

“Lunch time!” a nurse rolling in the cart called.

“You’re sitting with us today,” said Merida to Emma.

“It’s like  _Mean Girls_  without the mean.”

“Damn straight. We like you, Emma. On Wednesdays we wear blue,” she joked. “And every other day for that matter.”

“Here you go, Emma,” the woman said without having to ask for her name. She already held out Emma’s tray of stir-fry, decaf coffee, bread roll, and jello.

“You don’t actually drink that poison,” said Merida, crinkling her nose at Emma’s coffee when they all sat down.

“I’m in denial, my friend said.”

“No caffeine here,” grumbled Mulan, “but you can get a decent sugar high from all the juice, jello, and ice cream.”

“I like the way you think,” said Emma.

The girls ate their lunches, rambled about anything and everything, disposed of their trays, and started flipping through a stack of old magazines.

“They got divorced?!” said Merida in outrage.

“That’s old news, Merida,” said Mulan. “Look at the spine, I bet you that magazine is from last year.”

“Oh, yup. December 2014. Wow, they need to throw some of these out.”

“Why? You clearly need the refresher on pop culture,” said Emma.

“Well, look who’s not sleeping the day away,” a voice said from behind her. She spun in her chair and looked up; she was greeted with happy, gorgeous blue eyes. He was brighter than the sun and she couldn’t resist a smile.

“Oh, hello, Not-Boyfriend,” said Merida with lightning fast wit that made Emma’s cheeks flare up.

“Uh, Killian this is—”

“Merida,” she introduced herself and held out her hand. “Pleasure to meet you, Not-Boyfriend.”

“Am I missing something here?” he said with a smirk at Emma while shaking Merida’s hand.

“Ignore her. I’m Mulan,” she greeted next, “and we have visitors, too. Come on, Merida. Leave them alone.”

The two girls got up and made their way to the front desk. Merida hugged a woman with gray streaks in her dark brown hair. Her mother, Emma gathered, and imagined what fiery red hair Merida’s father must’ve had when he was still alive. Children weren’t allowed to come in, so her brothers, the little terrors, were nowhere in sight. Mulan greeted her grandmother who held a big smile and a bag full of snacks.

“What do you say, Not Girlfriend—patio again?” he asked with a smirk.

“Oh my god,” she huffed and walked ahead of him to the balcony, secretly smiling.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Copy and paste without the parentheses and spaces: itsalostgirlthing .tumblr .com(/)post(/)147759710584(/)crisis-resources or check out my tumblr (by the same username) for a direct link in my bio.


	9. Are You Happy or Are You Surviving?

“ _So…”_  began Killian with a proud grin. “How’s your day so far? Making friends I see.”

How was she? What a loaded question. Well, for starters, she was basically sitting, imprisoned inside a guarded balcony designed with massive plastic panels and barriers to keep her from reaching the top and potentially jumping to her doom should she feel the need to do so. So, there was that.

“Very cold,” she answered instead. Even in a giant security bubble, Emma had to appreciate the warmth of the sun on her overly air-conditioned skin. (That repairman was taking his sweet ass time.) Elsa would love it there, she thought; that girl could withstand freezing temperatures, but for Emma, the cold rooms and halls inside only reminded her of the chill of the cliffside the night Killian had tracked her down. The cold kept her on edge, serving as a constant reminder of her situation and how she’d wound up there—if the nurses in scrubs and patients in blue uniforms weren’t already reminders enough.

She let her head drop back and closed her eyes against the beaming sun, happy as ever and still shining on despite the recent events in Emma’s life. The world around her continued to flow, either oblivious or just unaffected and uncaring about the blackhole she’d barely managed to pull herself out of, but one she was still skirting around the edges of if she was being completely real with herself.

“What’s on your mind, love? Something’s weighing heavy on you, I can see it.”

She scrunched her nose like a kid with a bitter taste plastered to their tongue, like the sticky coat of the medication they made her take earlier. Grumpily she mumbled, “They’re making me take pills.”

“Yeah?” he responded easily. “Which?”

“How are you so nonchalant about this? I don’t mean to sound dramatic, but I’m on meds. I’m taking pills, Killian.  _Pills_. They think I need medicine to help me do something that’s natural for every other normally functioning person because, apparently, I’m incapable of being happy on my own.”

“So, what? Who cares what everyone else is doing? It’s whatever works for us that matters. Meds aren’t a bad thing. It’s just something we do. For our health; to take care of ourselves. Heart medication, insulin—it’s all the same if you think about it.”

“You say ‘we’ like everyone does it, like  _you_  do it. Normal people don’t have to do this.”

“Then you and I can be ‘not-normal’ together. Although, I mean it when I say there’s absolutely nothing wrong with us needing it. Loads of people do—with other therapies, this is the best way to battle these kinds of problems, and that’s that.”

“No way…” She shook her head, mouth dropping open in disbelief. “You  _do not_  take pills. I’ve never seen you do it and I’m with you almost 24/7. What about the times I’ve stayed over? I would’ve noticed.”

“First of all, it’s like a vitamin—and like vitamins, it’s not exactly a time-consuming process. I don’t have to do a ritual and a rain dance beforehand,” he replied dryly and smirked. “Second, I get up  _hours_  before you, Sleeping Beauty.”

“How did I not notice this?”

“I’m a little sly about it too. So,” he cleared this throat, feeling the edge of nervousness rising up, “Now that you know my secret, do you not like me anymore then?”

She cocked her head to the side and scoffed, “Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t care if you do.”

“Then don’t be so upset with yourself for having to take them too, yeah?”

Well, if it didn’t change how she felt about Killian then she really shouldn’t be so hard on herself about needing them either. He had a point. But still, the idea that those little pills were  _changing_ her in some way... She had to ask, as ridiculous as it felt, “What if I’m not  _me_  anymore?”

“Emma,” he soothed patiently, understanding her hesitancy. He’d been there before. “They don’t change who you are as a person. If it’s the right fit then you’ll feel more like yourself than you have since your moods, well, lost their balance. You’ll feel like you did before things started spinning out of your control.”

“Isn’t that still changing me then?” she insisted stubbornly, but not to be a brat—she was genuinely freaked out. Part of her felt stupid for her sudden concern about her well-being when just a few days ago she was ready to destroy herself.

“No, love, you’re changed  _now_. You are not your depression. Remember what it’s like to be able to focus? How easy it is to think, to plan, to act? To be yourself and push aside everything that hurts and everything that’s wrong with your life? That’s who you really are.”

She let out a frustrated sigh and he took her hand.

“You told me the other night that you didn’t know who you were anymore. This place, the treatment, the medication—it’s all going to help you remember that; m _inus_  everything that makes you feel like things are so wrong.”

“Like I’m not cursed?”

Stable happiness and control, friends and relationships, that was a fairytale for people like her; she’d accepted that for so long. But there were also moments when she felt deserving of her friends—of David, Killian, and their promise of family. So, maybe Killian had a point on this too.

“So…” she started hesitantly. “They gave them to you, too?”

“Of course they did,” he said. “I burned and scarred up my arm because I felt like I had to, like I didn’t have any other options except to basically mutilate myself. I fought with my family, my brother, and any sorry bastard who was around me at the wrong time. I was depressed and passively suicidal… I  _needed_  help, and I got it. Yes, with the urging from others, obviously, but I ended up admitting myself into a hospital, just like you, and I started trying out medications until I found the right one like you’re doing now, too. It was hard work, the trial and error. ‘Is this the right dosage, is that the right therapist for me,’ but it was  _so_  worth it because I got back everything I thought I’d lost. And you will, too, Swan. Don’t be afraid of change. If we do this right, it’s only going to go up from here,” he smiled.

“I’m sorry, I just… It’s taken a lot for me to admit that there’s even something wrong and now I feel like I’m in a place where I have zero control over anything that doesn’t involve what snacks I want. They tell me when to eat, when to go to bed, to take meds, supervising me… And I have to trust that they’re all here to help me when it goes against every basic survival instinct I’ve learned growing up the way I did. I have to do everything they say or else I won’t get my freedom back and it’s frustrating,” she rushed out. Killian tightened his grip, running his thumb in what he hoped were comforting strokes over the back of her hand.

“When you stop looking at this whole thing as another prison to bust out of, I’ll know you’re truly getting better.”

“I  _am_  better, Killian. I mean, look at me! I’m not like I was two nights ago.”

“No, darling. You’re  _adjusting_  and it’s temporary. You have to think of us as survivors. Before, when I didn’t know I had a problem, I’d feel this dark cloud suffocating me all the time to the point where it was hard to breathe. And then the miraculous would happen. I’d wake up one day feeling ‘better’ because I got used to it and found ways to function—like living without breathing. But I was just getting through the days, and nothing’s better. You’re not happier, you’re just  _surviving_. And, I’ve seen you happy before, Emma. This is not it.”

She brought her feet up to the bench and removed her hand from his. He frowned at the move and more so when she hugged her knees like all she had was herself in this world.

How many times had she felt things get darker only to wake up one morning with a new attitude and a distance from her emotions that made dragging herself out of bed to wait tables bearable? Or, how her school days and classes would muddle together into one solid week of apathy, half-assed notes, mediocre attempts at assignments, and failed tests—but, it was still a week she actually  _did_  manage to do.

The combination of ‘adjusting’ and self-harming got her through it all until it all let up and things went back to being bright and easy to breathe again. That’s when she was forced to play catch up at school, charm her boss and co-workers again after weeks of being anything else but likeable, and tending to the wounds on her legs with a fresh wave of self-loathing.

Exactly as Killian had said, she stopped caring about the darkness and everything along with it in order to survive it, and she was  _good_  at doing it. Too good, in fact; a sign of someone used to suffering in silence.

But she didn’t have to do that anymore, did she? She didn’t have to ‘get used to it’ everyday if it wasn’t there to begin with, right? She could feel better, be better, and be free—not from the hospital, but from the ugly monsters that had made themselves at home in her for far too long.

“Flu-ocks-a-ten,” she broke the silence.

“What was that?”

“Or ’Flu-ocks-a-teen,’ maybe?” She couldn’t remember the name. “Flu-something. It’s what they put me on.”

“Fluoxetine? That’s Prozac. There’s always a brand name and a generic name with these things.”

“Huh. Yeah, I’ve heard of Prozac before,” she said with sudden clarity.

“It’d probably sound a lot less intimidating if they just used the brand names. The generic ones sound like the chemicals on the back of window cleaner.”

She gave a slight smile in agreement. “What do you take?”

“Well, I started out on Prozac at first, too, but it didn’t work out so well for me… Made me agitated and too energetic, so they switched me over to a mood stabilizer, and that seemed to do the trick.”

“I’m sorry for being so petulant about it all,” she sighed. “It’s really just a control thing and they wouldn’t let me leave the medication room unless I took it, so I felt like I was being force fed.”

“Don’t apologize, Swan. What you’re going through right now is so bloody tough and stressful, and you’re handling it so well. You’re not giving yourself enough credit or enough of a break, for that matter.”

“You sure about that?” she asked.

“For me, it felt like the end of the world when I first had to take them. And, I’ll be honest, it didn’t help my trust issues with them when the one medication they started me off on didn’t work as intended. But, I also wasn’t giving a whole lot of information about myself. I wasn’t trying to help them understand me or my problems. I wasn’t letting them help me. I bet that if I had explained myself in actual detail then the whole thing would’ve gone much smoother.”

“I can’t imagine you being such a little monster.”

“Oh, I assure you, love—not only was I a monster,” he chuckled, “I was a downright pain in the arse, as well.”

“Oh, come on,” she scoffed in disbelief.

“No, really. Let’s see… For starters, I wasn’t open to anything they gave me. I practically went on a hunger strike. I didn’t want to go to sleep on time. I didn’t want to go to groups. Didn’t want to talk to anyone, including my doctor. I didn’t want to take my medication. Basically, all I wanted to do was sleep all day, stay up all night to annoy the graveyard staff, and spend my time scheming ways to get my hands on a lighter again,” he said in one quick stream of harsh honesty. Even if it painted him in a bad light, he wanted her to know how strong and pro-active she was actually being. She was taking all the right steps even if she was doubting herself and the process. “You’re doing much better than I did and it’s only your first day.”

“It’s my second day, actually,” she corrected.

“Your first  _real_  day. I’m assuming you met your new friends in group?”

“Yes. We did ‘Guided Visualization’ with trees and nature crap.”

“Oh, the whole ‘imagine you’re on a beach somewhere—the sand beneath your feet’ thing.”

“It was a forest, actually, and surprisingly, I’m rather good at imagining up pine trees and streams,” she laughed. “Who knew?”

“Couldn’t bloody stand that therapy. Fell asleep one time though, so I guess it did work to relax me.”

“You really were a little shit. But if you were sleeping all day and staying up all night, no wonder you knocked out.”

“Yes, I was the worst.”

“Well, they had us introduce ourselves, and that’s when Merida locked onto me.”

“Did you get to share favorite superpowers this time?”

“Nope. Favorite movies.”

“Let me guess… Something with crude humor and a lot of yelling?” he teased.

“You know it,” she said with pride. “Not your cup of tea, I know.”

“They’re not all bad.”

“Anchorman?”

“Okay, that one’s not on my list of ‘Tolerable Movies Emma Has Made Me Watch.’”

He was always so good to her and not just in watching movies he normally would never take a second glance at. He just wanted her to be at ease, to be at peace all the time. Their conversation was light from there on out, but the farther they strayed from talking about the hospital or her situation, the more her curiosity built in the back of her mind. She wanted to know about his time in the hospital. Did anyone do this for him? Remind him that there are little things, good things, to still have fun with even in the face of so much hardship? She tried to imagine Liam sitting with a brooding teenage Killian. He didn’t want to talk to anyone, he’d said. Did he talk to Liam?

“So, did your family visit you when you were in the hospital?”

“As much as they could. My uncle worked a lot of overtime and my aunt didn’t drive, so she would hitch a ride with Liam.”

“Friends?” asked Emma, hopeful for stories about people supporting him just as he’d been doing for her.

He gave her an awkward smile, averting his gaze in embarrassment… or shame? She couldn’t be sure without his eyes to tell her. “I was not fit for friends at the time, love. But, Liam took leave just to make sure I would be okay. I was lucky; he was there every day. Maybe not for both visiting times, but he was always there in the evenings. In the beginning, I didn’t even want to see anyone though.”

“That’s good that your family was there though—”

“Visiting hour is over!” the nurse’s voice rang from inside.

Emma ignored the call and scooted next to him, bumping his shoulder with hers then playfully doing it again until he got the message and looked back up, a lighter expression on his face. He leaned back into her, too, and smiled.

“Well,” she began in a softer voice, “I want you to know how much it means to me—you being my family right now and visiting me. Helping me through this all.”

“I like that.”

“What?”

“Me being your ‘family.’”

“How could you not get the friend-to-family promotion after all this has happened? I trust you, Killian. Probably more than anyone else. You know that.”

“Visiting hour is over,” the nurse called again.

“Dave won’t be too thrilled to hear that.”

“David’s not the one here with me right now.”

“I’ve been exactly where you are, Swan. I know how hard it can be to deal with this and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone; especially not you. I wish I could take this all away from you and make it go away. But I can’t.  _You_  can though, you can keep this darkness away. I know it. And, I swear I’m going to stay by you while you figure out the best way how.”

“I don’t understand how you can care about me so much. Me and all my ‘tragic-past’ and ‘tragic-present’ drama.”

He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and felt the familiar weight of her head leaning against his. “When you’re better,” he spoke softly, “you’ll see, Emma Swan. You’ll realize why it’s so easy to care about you.”

She felt something flutter in her chest. It felt a lot like the hope she was carefully cultivating back to full strength. Killian was her support and a powerful ally in her fight against this disease that challenged to take over her life. But in that moment, she felt like she could take it on; she could do it.

Emma felt at home.

That is, until the hard smack of embarrassment hit her when bright red hair and a turquoise plaid shirt came into view, speaking with a lilting voice. “Sorry for breaking up the little date you two have going on here, but heart-eyes is strictly limited to visiting hours only.”

“My god, Merida,” groaned Mulan from the doorway.

“No, but in all seriousness, the nurse isn’t too happy with your Not-Boyfriend still being here, so I volunteered to bring you in. Better me than that strict old witch.”

“Merida!” hissed Mulan. “She’s just doing her job.”

“Oh, yeah? Is it her job to be stingy with the ice cream cups, too?”

“Come on,” Emma rolled her eyes and tugged on his arm, “I’ll walk you out.” She walked ahead of Killian, quickly repeating to Merida as she passed by, “He’s not my boyfriend.”

Killian followed but paused just short of the door, giving a slight bow and a smirk as he gestured for Merida to walk in before him, too.

“Oh, you hear that, man?” she said over her shoulder. “You’re not her boyfriend. Better step up your game; looks like it might be a wee bit weak.”

“Stop terrorizing them,” scolded Mulan who then yanked Merida back towards the table they’d been reading at before.

When Emma hugged Killian goodbye and made her way back to the table, she prepared for more teasing from Merida, but was pleasantly surprised with only new commentary on outdated celebrity culture. For the next hour, she browsed through expired horoscopes and mentally thanked Merida and Mulan for their company and the significant dent they put in her boredom.

* * *

 

Elsa had caved, asking Killian whether Emma would want to see her or not, and Killian dutifully relayed her question to Emma immediately.

After hanging up with Killian, she sat there with the phones and tried to imagine Elsa come to this place, but in particular, Elsa seeing her in a place like this. She’d taken a deep breath and just started dialing with gaining speed the number that Killian had scribbled neatly on her precious piece of paper with all the people she’d possibly want to talk to while under hospital watch.

 _“Hello?”_ Elsa had answered in confusion. Emma was calling from the blocked number of the unit.

 _“Hey, Elsa. It’s me,”_ she said casually, like she was hanging out in her room watching TV.

The gasp on the other end of the line, so full of joy and relief, had brought a little smile onto Emma’s face; just like the one gracing her lips right then as she watched Elsa gliding over to her table. Emma abandoned her crossword puzzle and sprang to her feet.

“Emma!” she greeted, enveloping Emma in the warmest hug the cool blonde could muster. Elsa’s affection was infectious and encouraged Emma to hold her as close as humanly possible too. For the first time in days, Emma smiled a true smile, like this was the last straw in a string of little smiles that Killian had skillfully drawn out of her during their visiting hours; the ones he’d tried so hard to bring forward as if slowly chipping away and cracking the misery that had settled and petrified around her.

Elsa was the first person to accept her—breaks, cracks, and scars included. Emma would never dismiss Killian’s support, he was an incredible source of strength and comfort to her, but her connection with Killian was more concrete—like they’d been carved from stone, carefully and meticulously, into something beautiful that she could cherish and rely on no matter what.

Elsa was her friend of course, too, but the moment she’d discovered Emma’s dark secret and ran to her side instead of  _away_  from her… Well, that was a first for her. It was a moment when the two of them were linked by true, selfless, and unconditional friendship.

Killian knew the details of Emma’s pain better than anyone, but Elsa was the only one who knew what it actually looked like; who’d seen the ugliness Emma despised and hid under her clothes.

“I hope you don’t mind me stealing your visiting time from Killian.”

“No, not at all. I’m so—” Happy? Was Emma capable of that anymore? “It’s great that you could come all the way down here. I know it’s a drive.”

“Only twenty minutes. Hardly a drive.” She shrugged, swooping up Emma’s arm in hers and leading them to the sage green couch across the room as if she’d been in here before. “Especially when I haven’t seen you in two weeks.”

“Yeah… Sorry about that. I just didn’t want anyone to have to be around me when I was, well, you know— _like that_.”

“You don’t have to apologize for anything. This is good! This is how things begin and get better. Change is never easy. I speak from my own experiences.”

Elsa looked so comfortable sitting on the couch, smiling at a nurse from the new shift that greeted the both of them.

“Experience?” Emma asked, curious about Elsa’s seeming familiarity.

“I have an anxiety disorder, remember? Mild agoraphobia, at one point, when things were at my worst.”

“Like, fear of being outside?”

“I basically couldn’t leave my house without thinking life was going to take me out somehow—car accident, plane falling on me. Ridiculous, I know, but my paranoia was just out of control.” She was quiet for a moment, lost in the memories, but let out a little sigh and shrugged again. “Anna was really good to me when it was all happening. Like Killian is to you, I’m sure,” she smiled.

Elsa had come such a long way, to be able to shrug the discomfort away from her on command; to put a positive spin on something that was once so crippling and frightening. It was an amazing feat and the inspiration of this was not lost on Emma.

“Did you ever have to... You know.”

“What? Go to a hospital?”

“Yeah, like this—” Emma gestured to everything around them, “—Like me?”

“Well, I did this thing called Out-patient Program. You’re In-patient which means you have to stay here while under observation. With mine, I got to go home, but I came and did programs and therapy at the hospital during the day, every day for a while.”

“How long?”

“About, hmm… Six months? Maybe a little less.”

“ _Six months?_ ” gasped Emma. “How? I’ve been in here for less than a week and I’m already losing my mind. Well, whatever I have left,” she joked and Elsa giggled. Emma let another smile shine through.

This was the Emma that Elsa knew—dry wit and the ability to take an uncomfortable instance and distance it, put it into perspective, and repackage it until it was something laughable. She didn’t know if Emma had noticed all that, but there was a certain amount of resilience that was required to see passed the murkiness at what really lay underneath. Elsa was relieved that despite the events that led to her being there, Emma was still holding on to the pieces that made her Emma—just like Killian had told her to do. That was who she was and Elsa was proud; if Emma could see the person Elsa had been when she was afraid to leave her house, to leave her room… ‘Unrecognizable’ didn’t do that time its unfortunate justice.

“It’s like going to school,” said Elsa. “Some days, sure, you don’t want to talk about your feelings, but that doesn’t mean you can’t listen to someone else’s in the circle. In a way, it helps you, too.”

“I guess I can see that.”

“How are you doing though? Aside from ‘losing your mind.’ I suspect bored, right? I mean, if we all couldn’t keep our hands off our phones when we went camping, I can only imagine it’s torture.”

“Not really,” smirked Emma then she leaned in and whispered, “Killian sneaks in my phone, so I get my fix every day.”

“Leave it to you two to completely ignore the rules.” She rolled her eyes.

“There was actually a lot of convincing on my end.”

“Oh, and I’m sure he put up such a fight,” she said sarcastically.

“Elsa,” she warned.

“Did you even have to really bat your lashes or did you just blink and he swooned?”

“Oh my god,” she huffed, the tips of her ears turning pink.

“Fine, fine. I’m done teasing. But I will say that I’ve never witnessed him being so—how can I phrase it… Reserved? As I have these last two weeks. First, I suspect, he was worried about you when you took your… ‘break’ from everything, but since you came here, he’s been so distracted.”

Emma groaned, “No. Ugh, I don’t want his life ruined because of the mess mine is in right now—”

“His life isn’t ruined, Emma. We just care about you and we want you to feel like you’re in a better place than you’ve been feeling lately. It’s different without you around and I can only imagine what a change it is for Killian especially since you two are joined at the hip. You’re an essential part of his life and mine. We need you, you know.”

Emma grew serious, letting the weight of Elsa’s words settle. She was an important part of  _them_. She meant something to someone—to multiple people. She’d tried to convince herself so much that no one would notice; that she was nothing thus no empty space would be left behind if she disappeared for good.

“We definitely need you back—first of all, Victor and Kristoff are completely out of control without our Sheriff Swan declaring order and squashing their clowning around in its tracks.”

“I miss you all, too,” she said quietly. She didn’t want to let herself feel it—the thing the vicious voices in her head had called weakness only a week ago—but she did miss her friends, her family, her life when it was  _good_.

And maybe those moments and those people were enough to get her through this all.

She could get through this all.

* * *

 

“One down, David to go,” said Killian over the phone.

Emma was in one of the chairs she’d pulled over to the wall of phones. She was playing and twisting the cord around her hand while she talked to Killian after Elsa had left. She couldn’t end the day without hearing from him in one way or another.

“Yeah. He’s the big one though. At least Elsa knew something was going on. David just thinks I’m overworked and tired, hiding out in my room. I doubt he’s expecting to meet me in the hospital.”

“He’ll be concerned for sure. Maybe a little overbearing for a moment, but once you talk to him and he knows you’re alright, he’ll be just fine.”

“You’re right. You’re totally right.”

“Are you alright though?”

Once more. Loaded question, but… “I definitely feel better now that I saw Elsa,” she sighed. “It was a big weight off my shoulders. I feel a little more confident not hiding all of this, and, I don’t know if it’s too soon, but they’ve been increasing my meds each day and… I don’t know, it might be working? A little. Maybe. It’s hard to tell. I’m basically on a supposedly stress-free vacation kind of environment right now.”

“That’s great, Swan. I’m sure it’s starting to take affect by now. It’s been, what? Three days?”

“Yup. Three days on meds. Four days locked up.”

“ _Emma_ ,” he whined.

“I’m joking, I’m joking.” She looked over at Mulan and Merida trying to convince the nurses to let them use the TV in the living room since the one in the actual TV room was being controlled by a woman who didn’t mind spending all day watching crime drama  _after_  crime drama  _after_  crime drama. “Seriously, it’s not so bad. I’m still on the fence about everyone knowing where I am though.”

“Understandable.”

“I feel kind of stagnate though. I just want this all to work already.”

“The more work you get to do—crafts, distractions, group therapy—the more it’ll feel like you’re actually doing something worthwhile since, clearly, taking it easy is not your strong suit.”

She rolled her eyes. “We can’t all be lazy like you.” It was such a lie. Killian was the hardest worker she knew, but she couldn’t resist the temptation of teasing him in some way.

“Excuse you. I’m up at dawn on a daily basis. You, on the other hand, have suddenly decided to throw your usual sleeping habits of staying in bed until noon out the window. And trying your damndest to get an energy buzz on decaffeinated coffee while running restlessly around the unit instead.”

“I know. Merida and I both drank five cups in the last hour. We’re doing an experiment to see which will come first: our stomachs exploding or single spike in energy.”

“Looks like you’ve found one of your tribe in Merida.”

“Yeah, she’s pretty awesome. I don’t know, I might even keep in touch with her after all this. Might be awkward though, but who knows? Might not.”

“Well, I’m sure it would be a different experience for you because you two are at least close in age.”

“My experience is more ‘summer camp.’ Yours was more—”

“’Teenager dragged to an adult party and now everyone wants to talk to me about life advice and my future’? Oh yeah.” He heard her laugh mingle with the static of the hospital phone.

“You turned out well though,” she smiled.

“And you will too.”

“I hope so.”

“Whoa there,” he said cheerily. “Did you just say ‘hope’? I think you just mentioned ‘hope.’”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t blow it out of proportion. What I mean is… I just… I miss everyone, you know? I miss seeing Elsa every day and seeing her today reminded me of what it felt like when I was clean from self harming and life was going smoothly. It reminded me that I could go back to hanging out with you and truly enjoying myself, all carefree and not just because I’m desperately trying to run away from something. And…”

“…And?”

“I know now that I’m not going to ever feel that way again if I don’t at least  _try_  to give this place a chance to do some good before I get out of here and meet with that counselor at school again, or find my own therapist, psychiatrist, whatever. If I don’t start  _trying_  to change while I’m in here, I’ll end up leaving and going back to exactly where I was before.” She remembered what Elsa had said, “ _’Change is never easy.’_  Change is hard, yeah, but I think I’ve found something to keep me moving forward.”

“And that, Swan, is called perspective,” he grinned. “It’s going to help you out so much, you have no idea.”

“The bigger picture being me happy again.”

“At least you know what to aim for, what it feels like,” he said in a strange tone.

“Did you?” she asked, picking up on it. “After you got out of the hospital and started getting things back on track, did you aim for that, too?”

He was silent on his end, at a loss for words, but she waited for him to come back from his old wounds, his past. “Honestly, Swan… I didn’t know what it was like. I was already older and being happy as a kid with my mum and Liam just seemed so distant like it belonged to a different lifetime. I just kept doing what I was supposed to do after I got out, but I didn’t know what it really felt like to be happy until I came here and met Anna and Kristoff—hell, even Victor. But, I do know that if I had to think of a point in time when I was truly at my happiest, it’d be during our camping trip. All of us hanging out—you and me eating and drinking and playing cards; attempting, and failing miserably because we were just so drunk, to map out stars… Oh, when I dunked you into the creek—“ He heard her laugh on her end “—that’s the happiness I aim for now. The shenanigans we get ourselves into all the time, all of our little adventures, that’s my reference point for ‘happy’ now.”

That trip is when she had gotten caught by Elsa. That moment had tinged the whole experience after, but listening to Killian talk about it, all the good moments (and there were really just so many of them now that she saw through his eyes), it made her realize the power of perspective and how catching it was.

In the grand scheme of things, Elsa was her closest friend because of that trip. Killian’s arm band was the first clue to Killian’s own past of self-harming, the one that made her feel understood in ways she’d never thought she’d ever feel with someone else. The two of them swimming, her fully clothed still, was essentially Killian showing Emma another way to live her life despite her burden; that she could  _still_  live her life.

David and her making a dedicated, yet not very successful, team at figuring out that damn grill and all those shooting stars and wishes she made about things being normal one day. Maybe they could come true in time, but she had to stick around to receive them. She couldn’t let herself get lost and disappear.

Knowing that she was a part of Killian’s own ‘perspective,’ a part of the vision that kept him grounded and on track, that their moments together were what came to mind when he thought of his driving force of happiness, she realized the immensity of his role in hers, too; Of Elsa’s; and David’s; and Ruby’s; and Dorothy’s; and Anna’s; and Kristoff’s; even Victor’s—

She couldn’t give up now.

Killian and Elsa needed her just as much as she needed them. She was a part of their happiness and all she had to do now was take her next step towards her own.

The next morning, Emma woke up without dread. She took her medicine without dread. Didn’t dread the group sessions. Most definitely didn’t dread her much needed time with Killian after missing him the night before. The morning after that, she woke up nervous, but eager to share and essentially get rid of another secret to someone else who could be a support to her, too.

She was finally ready to tell David everything and face his reaction whatever it may be.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, it's been a while, lovelies. I moved and I didn't write for months because I just was not feeling my new life, but I busted this out and I'm hoping I can use this as motivation to get back on track. Shout out to CSFicPromotion on tumblr for their amazing reviews. I'm so floored and giddy from the kind words. If you have time, my beautiful readers, leave a kudos or a comment telling me about your own struggles and your own lives. Nothing motivates me more than getting to know the people that relate to this story because it's both such a personal tale, but also something we all share. It's surprising how alone we can all feel when we're in these places and yet have such similar stories, pain, hopes, revelations, and ways of staying strong. Anywho, no pressure, but I'm really curious about you guys who tune in every chapter. Do you feel the same things as Emma---as me? What does this story mean to you and do we experience the same things? I wonder this every time I get a like, reblog, comment, kudos, sentences in the tags. Thank you for the people who direct message me on tumblr<3
> 
> ~~I'll start. I'm a she/her from San Francisco, CA and I'm Bipolar II as of 2012 with purple hair. Sometimes it's hard for me to keep myself perky, but I try---man, do I try to stay positive or at the very least neutral. It takes me ten minutes to even out my eyeliner sometimes. I used to self-harm and I've been clean for two and a half years. I buy more books than I can read. God, I get into car accidents more than I think I can handle (but I do end up surviving despite what I think in the moment). I want two cats someday when I'm moved and graduated in Psychology. And I feel like each character I write with their mental illnesses and struggles come from my own experiences.~~ And what about you?
> 
> Love you all, let's all be friends, and hope you enjoyed this baby chapter!


	10. Breathe Everything Out

“You’ll be fine editing without me?”

“For the hundredth time, David.” Mary Margaret rolled her eyes again at his fussiness.

Seeing Emma was important to him. Given her rough history of balancing her ‘low points’ (as he called them) with responsibilities—and especially given the scarce and suspiciously short texts he’d barely squeezed from her in the last two weeks, it was crucial for David’s own sanity to know that she was making it through. With his and Mary Margaret’s joint projects, his own work, and last but not least, his girlfriend herself, he hadn’t exactly been intensely involved in Emma’s life lately. It didn’t help that _that boy_ was already hanging around her; “monopolizing” her time, as he’d ranted to Mary Margaret more than once.

Sure, David begrudgingly accepted that Killian was a source of friendship for his sister, and yes, if Emma was feeling particularly bad these last weeks, he knew without a doubt whatsoever that at least she had a persistent friend in Killian. Still, it was his duty as a big brother to check on her. She was his family; had been from the moment he gave that solemn skinny girl in the faded red flannel a tour of her new high school and introductions to his small group of friends.

He had known from his first in-depth conversation with her during lunch, while she scarfed down her lunch and the half of his which he’d offered her, that there was something more to her. Something set Emma apart from the other students who carelessly went about their schooldays. What really drew him to her was her capacity to push away this clouding sense of heaviness from around herself to enjoy the little moments; and also, the inner power she had to not just defend herself, but to lend strength to other kids who couldn’t find it in themselves when they needed it most. That heaviness never went away though, and in all his years of knowing Emma, he’d seen it try to consume her when she was at her most vulnerable.

He was usually right about when she was going through her low points, and right then, his gut was telling him something was off. He trusted his instincts and wouldn’t brush this off. (After all, it was his instincts that correctly predicted Killian’s growing place in Emma’s life. He was someone special to her and David knew it from his and Mary Margaret’s first attendance to a MHA—Mental Health Awareness—meeting.)

Despite this all, he still didn’t like the idea of abandoning Mary Margaret to work for their grade alone.

“I just don’t want to leave you with all the work. I mean, it’s not fair. The whole project was already your idea to begin with, and I have to contribute in some way,” he insisted.

“David, for the last time, I’m _fine_. Besides, I’m not the one you should be worried about,” she said knowingly. “She hasn’t wanted to talk to anyone in weeks and if you have even the tiniest inkling that something might be wrong, then you should follow your hunch. She’s your family.”

“I’m just anxious.”

“About Emma?”

“Yes, and everything else, too. It’s a hard time in the semester… for everyone.”

“Just remember what to do when you’re stressed—”

“ _’Breathe in, breathe everything out, and focus on one thing at a time,’_ ” they recited in unison.

“Maybe you should consider going into counseling,” he smiled.

“I have a hard time reminding myself of that little mantra when things start getting out of control for me already. I can’t even begin to think about taking initiative for someone _else’s_ recovery. I’ll leave the counseling to Killian’s expertise.”

He ignored the mention of Killian, stood up from her bed and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close and mumbling, “You’re doing amazing, sweetheart. You _are_ amazing.”

“So charming,” she grinned, “but so late. Get a move on. This is more important.”

“Yes, dear. You’re right.”

“Of course I am,” she said brightly. “Grades are important, but I’m more than happy to spend a little extra time on this while you go catch up with her. You skipping this time with her when she’s been avoiding everyone is not the right thing to do. Agreed?”

He nuzzled his head onto her shoulder. “I love you, you know.”

“I love you, too. Now stop wasting time. She said it was important to not be late and that the place was confusing to get to, remember?”

“I hope she’s not pranking me. Forwarding an address was sort of sketchy. Why couldn’t she just text me the name of the café?”

“She’s not pranking you, David,” said Mary Margaret dryly.

“You’d be surprised of what evils Emma is capable of.”

“So she replaced your Oreo fillings with mayonnaise. I don’t think that constitutes ‘evil.’”

“Tell that to my trust issues. I was a changed person that day.”

She pushed him off of her, gave him a stern look then lightly pecked him on the cheek before pushing him out of her dorm room.

Despite the little nag of concern in the back of his mind, a goofy smile set on his face as he once more considered how lucky he was to have found Mary Margaret and to have her be so supportive of the things and people so important to him.

However, the longer he drove, the more his smile faded and the more curious he became of the mystery destination of this restaurant Emma had sent him. His smile dropped completely off his face when he found himself entering the parking lot to an old, gray concrete building with tinted windows lining the face of it. He was just about to curse his GPS when he spotted a familiar figure, wearing his signature leather jacket, resting back against a pillar near the entrance with a paper bag in his hand. As he slowed down to a crawl, Killian glanced up at the incoming car.

David pulled up to the front of the entrance where a bored person in black slacks and a white button-up shirt rounded the car immediately and waited to take over and park for David.

 _‘There’s… valet?’_ he thought.

Killian straightened himself and watched as David stuffed a piece of paper, with a matching number to the ticket now sitting on his car’s dash, in his pocket. The confusion on David’s face made Killian nervous—nervous for Emma and what she had decided was the best thing to do for her in her particular situation.

“Killian,” greeted David in a clipped tone. “What are _you_ doing here? I thought Emma and I were going to lunch. Just us. I didn’t expect this was going to be…” David caught a glimpse of the bronze letters set above the glass doors behind Killian. “Behavioral Center?” he read.

Any tinge of jealously of having to put up with Killian’s incessant presence around Emma bled away and the frown on the boy in front of him confirmed his suspicions that things _were not_ fine; that _there was_ trouble; and that Emma _did_ need his help.

Killian began slowly, “Before you say anything else—”

David felt a stab of panic. “What is this place? Where’s Emma?” He barged passed Killian and rushed into the lobby with no idea where he was going, but he just knew he had to move. Killian tried to catch up to him. 

“Mate, she’s alright,” said Killian, but then his mouth twisted a bit as he considered the situation. “Well, in a manner of speaking.” Because Emma wasn’t ‘alright.’ “She’s _safe_ ,” he amended.

“ _Safe?!_ What’s going on, Jones?” he demanded, his fear turning to anger at Killian.

“Come on,” sighed Killian, unable to hide the unease in his features. “I’ll tell you on the way up.” He started to make his way down the, to him, very familiar hallway towards the elevators. David followed him down a moment later.

* * *

 

Killian had given very limited information and understood David’s frustration with him, but Emma would speak for herself soon enough.

“So, she needed ‘help’?” asked David.

“Yes, and she’s getting it. Like I said, she’s safe and staying in a good place.”

“What does she need help for?”

Killian couldn’t tell if David was clueless or just in shock, but he settled on ‘behavioral center’ not being the most descriptive or recognizable of names for what people usually called ‘the psych ward’ or ‘mental institution.’ He shook his head and looked David in the eye.

“It’s not my place to tell you. You’ll see Emma in a minute. And I have to say it, so _don’t_ get offended: try to stay calm. Don’t get over-excited, let her explain at her own pace, and be open to what she’s saying.”

“I don’t need you to tell me how to listen to my little sister, Jones.” David, turned directly towards Killian, glared as if insulted. Killian remained facing the front, eyes fixed up at the light shifting from each floor number to the next.

“I’m just saying,” he said patiently, “that it might be a shock and I know you’re not exactly a huge fan of me, but I’ve been through this before. I’ve been through what Emma’s going through and it’s an extremely sensitive situation. Honestly, from what she and I have talked about, I _know_ you’re going to be in unfamiliar territory.”

The elevator let out a soft ding and the doors unfolded to a small, clean lobby with a few people in line for a sign-in book at the receptionists’ table. Killian walked ahead of David, letting him take everything in. While his eyes darted around the room frantically searching for answers he was impatient to get, he closely followed Killian towards the table.

“David Nolan here to see Emma Swan,” said Killian kindly to the person behind the desk. There was no need to introduce himself, the staff was used to the handsome and charmingly polite boy signing in for his daily visits to Emma. The nurse, in black and white zebra printed scrubs, opened a thick plastic binder. Patients’ names were printed across the tops of the pages they flipped though, making their way towards ‘S’. They hummed as they located ‘Swan’ and underneath in Emma’s handwriting, ‘David Nolan’ was listed.

 _‘Second to Killian,’_ thought David. There was a slight pang in his heart that he wasn’t her first contact—but given how little he knew of this situation, of course Killian would outrank him. He began to re-evaluate just how much of a source of support Killian was to her and was equal parts both jealous and grateful.

“Alright, you’re all set,” the nurse spoke. “They’ll be opening up the doors to the unit in a minute or two, so you can just take a seat.”

Killian thanked them, turned around, and nodded at David to follow him.

They settled in the corner next to a table with clear plastic holders, each with the very same pamphlets Emma had spotted when she was being rolled into the unit on the stretcher from the ambulance just earlier that week.

 _Zoloft. Cymbalta. Seroquel. Abilify._ The glossy pamphlets were for medications David vaguely remembered hearing before in ads between TV shows.

 _Ativan._ He recognized that one. Mary Margaret took that from time to time. It began to dawn on him.

“Wait—“ His head whipped towards Killian in realization. Killian was tapping his finger on the wooden arm rest, doing his best to conceal his nerves for Emma. “Is this one of those hospitals for—?”

The light colored doors clicked open, silencing David mid-question, while two nurses propped them open on both sides.

“Come on,” said Killian, the unease in his voice made David’s thoughts race even faster. “And remember what I said.” There was no room for argument in his tone this time. It wasn’t just a suggestion, it was a demand. David felt like a kid being warned to act appropriately, about to tag along into some serious business.  In almost uncharacteristic docility, he nodded, acknowledging that in this situation, Killian may know best. He followed, eyes wide and lips parted like there were a million things he wanted to say all at once.

The two boys passed the threshold which opened up to the large room where Emma spent most of her days with Mulan and Merida waiting for Killian’s visits.

They stopped, Killian scanning the crowd of visitors and patients all greeting one another and claiming tables to enjoy lunch with each other. He didn’t see her hanging around Merida with her striking head of red curls; nor did he see her hovering around Mulan who was now hugging her father, mother, and grandmother.

Then they heard a small voice from behind them. Hesitant. Awkward. “Hey, guys…”

David turned around and saw Emma, dressed in a knit gray sweater, extra-long sleeves pulled and wound tightly in her gripped hands, and jeans—which, Killian noted, must’ve meant they weren’t too rough on her healing wounds anymore.

To David, she looked the same. Same clothes, same straight hair falling over her shoulders, but her arms were wrapped around herself, fists clenched around her sweater, and her smile looked unsure. Not to mention, her usually expressive eyes kept darting away from him to look more at Killian and their surroundings. She didn’t want him to see something—probably trying to downplay her discomfort.

Standing in front of the brightly lit hallway with large canvased photo stills of nature scenes, something about Emma seemed… _smaller_. Like she was trying to shrink into herself. The longer David stared at her, utterly confused, the more she seemed to try to pull away from his gaze; hunching over just a little more, ducking her head to hide more of her face.

Killian cleared his throat, coming to her aid. Emma let out a little sigh of relief when David tore his studying eyes off of her.

“Thought you could use a break from your usual lunch,” he said, holding up the bag in his right hand. “I brought burgers and fries—”

“What, no onion rings?” she joked, trying to diffuse the tension.

“You didn’t let me finish,” he chuckled. “Grilled cheese and onion rings for the lady.”

“My hero.” Her lips twitched up into a small smile, but she had released her hold on herself signaling to Killian that his distractions were working.

“Shall we go out to the patio then?” he suggested.

They sat down at one of the round tables and David scanned all around. The plastic guards of the balcony caught his eye first, but then he began to notice all the people in matching baby blue clothes, and finally at Emma who started picking at the fries Killian had laid in front of him while he gathered up her onion rings.

“Fries and a burger for you,” said Killian, pushing food towards David who ignored him, almost irritated with his normalcy.

“Emma…” David was unable to resist holding off his questions any longer. But, when he began, a floodgate of them came gushing out. “What’s going on? Are you staying here? Is this where you’ve been? How long have you been here? What is this place—”

“Mate.” Killian’s warning cut through David’s panic and he could hear Mary Margaret’s voice in his head.

_‘Breathe in, breathe everything out, focus…’_

“This is a behavioral center,” stated Emma.

“What is that?” he asked.

“It’s a place where they keep… um, people like _me_ under observation for a little bit,” she answered, abandoning Killian’s fries and snatching up the biggest protruding onion ring from her container.

“People like you? What does that even mean?”

“It means…” She didn’t know how to say it. She felt insignificant and ridiculous all of a sudden; insecure about everything she’d done to get here, insecure about just being there now. Like her problems suddenly didn’t seem that big, that she was being over-dramatic. She was spiraling in her head, her hand under the table clawed and pressed down on her leg—as a result, putting pressure against the scabbed cuts and scratches that lay underneath her jeans.

Then she felt Killian’s knee bump into hers. She looked at him and he smiled.

“I have been having a rough time with things,” she said, looking at Killian who nodded encouragingly. She sighed and turned her attention back to David, looking him in the eye and stating, “And, I needed… help for it.”

“Rough time…?” he repeated in confusion.

She felt like yelling, ‘Surprise! It’s just a prank. I’m fine. I’m not really staying here. This is just a crappy restaurant. Hey, let’s go get lunch somewhere else.’ But she _was_ a patient. She _did_ need help. And she was getting that help, but she just couldn’t communicate that.

Elsa had stolen her secret about her self-harming, catching her, scars on full display.  

Killian had stolen her secret, too, when he opened that drawer and when he’d accidentally grabbed her raw arm.

So far, the only people she’d actually, voluntarily shared her secrets with were professionals. They were trained to handle situations and people in dark places like her. But David? Yes, she knew he loved her, but he wasn’t exactly equipped for this.

This was the first time she was going to share something willingly with the risk of being misunderstood, judged…

Rejected.

She looked to Killian and begged him with her eyes to help her.

“Come on, love,” he soothed in a hushed voice. “It’s okay, just tell him the truth.”

She gulped and shoved another of his fries in her mouth, trying to remember what casual conversation sounded like. Eating and talking—that was normal, right? She’d had a hard time lately remembering what ‘normal’ was supposed to feel like.

“Okay,” she breathed out. “I’ve been depressed.”

She could practically hear the high-pitched whistling of a bomb being dropped from the sky. She waited for it to explode in the form of David’s reaction, but before it could get to that point, she had to reassure him that there was a purpose to her being there first.

So, in clinical detail, she rushed out in nearly one breath, “I’ve been dealing with it on and off for a long time. And things were really bad this last week, so I went to see a counselor and we all decided that the best thing for me to do was to come here, stay here, and see what they could do to help me deal with it.” She nodded, having said what she had to say, she waited once more.

“Emma…”

Here it comes. She steeled herself for it.

“I know you have some low’s… but was it really getting that bad?”

She felt suspended, waiting for that bomb to drop and blow every fractional piece of stability she’d scraped together in the past days, but there wasn’t any judgment in David’s voice. If anything, he sounded… guilty?

In an instant she knew what he was doing and where his mind was going with this and wanted to put a stop to it.

“Hey, no, David—” She reached over and put her hand on his. “It’s not your fault. It’s no one’s fault. I’m good at hiding things and pretending like they don’t bug me. You know that, you know me,” she gave a nervous laugh, but David didn’t return it. “I’m the queen of denial. But all the pushing it away from me… it was just taking more and more of a toll on me. And, my grades turned to shit. Then I got fired from my job. I just needed a second chance at things. Everything we do at MHA, everything I’ve learned from meetings and workshops and everyone else… It’s all pointed me in this direction and earlier this week, I decided to actually follow it. It’s not your responsibility to take care of me, though I do love and appreciate that you try. _I_ had to do this for myself. _I_ had to decide that I didn’t want to keep feeling the way I did. I needed help, but I had to reach out for it. I had to try to save myself first.”

David stared at her sadly, her words, ‘…save myself…’ rang in his head and only cemented how heavy and rough things had been for her. He stayed quiet though, as Killian had suggested, waiting for Emma to finish what she’d been dying to tell him not just this last week, but maybe for the last couple of years.

“I’m sorry I kept this from you. It doesn’t mean that I don’t trust you because you being here with me right now, I realize that I don’t have to be scared of anything with you… But it was hard just admitting it to myself that something was wrong—that I had to actually go out and try to find a solution to this problem I’ve been trying to push away. I’m so sorry, David.”

“No, you have nothing to be sorry about, Ems,” he gave her a reassuring, albeit slightly broken, smile. “You’re doing what’s right for you and for anyone in this situation, and I’m so, so proud of you. You know you can tell me anything and, yeah, I’m sad that you’ve had to deal with this yourself, but you’re getting help now and that’s all that matters to me, y’know? All that matters is that you’re safe.”

“David, I—” Half of her secret was told, but the other half, well... She removed her hand from his. “That’s not all.” She started picking at her nail-beds, eyes down to her lap and heart angrily hammering in her chest. “I—I’ve been doing stuff. To myself.”

“Like what kind of stuff?” he asked, trying to meet her stare, but she wasn’t having that.

“Like… hurting myself?”

“Emma…” He couldn’t help saying her name and the heartbreak in his tone made her eyes water.

“I’m trying to stop. I haven’t been since I got here, but it’s bad sometimes. I can’t stop myself when things get really bad for me—”

Killian sat still as a statue, eyes glued to the table as well. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust David to not have an outburst at the news, but listening to Emma almost felt like when he’d come out about it to his aunt and uncle after they’d sat him down at the dining room table; his aunt in tears because she’d walked in on him changing his shirt and saw all the angry marks on his bicep.

“—I’ve been doing it for a while,” her voice started to crack, beginning to pitch higher and higher. “I’ve been at it for more than a year.” She could see the blur in her vision, David was becoming a hazy figure sitting across from her, Killian a distorted mess and whirl of black leather and dark hair. The only thing clear was the fact that she was starting to cry. “And it’s not okay. It’s not normal and I’m not going to pretend it is because it _feels_ wrong after I do it. I don’t completely understand why I do it yet, I’m working on that, but I just need you to know that I’m trying to stop, and I’m trying to _be_ better and get better because I don’t want to…” She could feel the slow stream of tears falling down her face. One by one, they fell into the crease of her lips and collected at the bottom of her chin. “I don’t want to be this way anymore. I don’t want to feel this way and I don’t…” She sniffled and let out a shaky breath, wiping her face roughly with the sleeve of her sweater as if telling herself to get a grip, but Killian’s hand reached out for hers under the table and stroked it to remind her to be gentle with herself.

“I just need you to understand that I’m trying and that I know it’s wrong, but I just… I guess I hate myself sometimes. I hate the way I react. The things I say, the way I handle things. I just feel like this messed up, jumbled version of who I’m supposed to be and hurting myself makes the things on the inside seem… _Real_. I don’t just feel like I’m hurting, I actually am hurting. I can see them and—”

She deserved understanding, she deserved to let herself be vulnerable and honest about her pain; something that she had tried so hard in her life to avoid doing. Tough love was a cruel lie she’d been fed by her boss, adults, and teachers; she didn’t deserve to suffer it from herself. Her free hand kept wiping at her unremittingly crying eyes.

“It’s just bad,” she continued. “This whole thing is bad. I don’t like it. I don’t like me.”

“I had no idea you were going through all this,” whispered David. “I knew there was something wrong, but you always seemed so dismissive of it that _I_ didn’t want to make it a problem for you if you didn’t think there was one. I wish you had told me a long time ago that things were this way for you, Emma, because maybe I could’ve helped you realize you needed help earlier.” He got up from his seat and dragged his chair next to hers, sat down, and pulled her into him. She took her hand back from Killian and wrapped her arms around David’s waist, burying her face in his chest and tried to stop crying.

Killian had been there for her through so much and wanted to be there for her while she explained, but their hug was like the one his uncle had given him—one that tried to say, ‘You’re safe. You’re not alone’—and it was time to give them some space.

Wordlessly and soundlessly, Killian got up, nodded at David, and walked back inside the building; David thanking him silently with his eyes as he held onto Emma.

* * *

 

Once more, Emma walked her visitors to the door with its invisible line that kept her safely inside and them to freely walk out and not come back.

Not that Killian would ever abandon her, and now she knew David wouldn’t ever give up on her either.

“So, can we do this again? You said you didn’t know how long you’d be here for, right?” asked David.

“You and Killian could carpool tomorrow—or whenever you have time. Or want to. No pressure, I’m really okay now. I mean, I’d be totally happy to see you, but you don’t _have_ to. I know it’s the end of the semester and things are getting busy for you guys.”

“I’d love to come back tomorrow,” he smiled. “And, yes, if Killian is alright with it… I guess we can take turns carpooling.”

“I have no qualms with it.”

“Good,” she said. “I’ll see you later then, Killian.”

“Sure, love.”

“Wait. Later? There’s another visiting time today?”

She didn’t know why she had a sudden feeling of awkwardness. It’s just that Elsa had come during the day and now David had, too, but Killian, despite his nearly spotless track record of making the day visiting hours, _always_ showed up to the evening ones no matter what. In a weird ‘being held in a psychiatric hospital’ way, evening visits were… _their_ thing. She could unwind from a tiring day of feeling very aware of all the different presences around her, her illness and recovery steps from it, of knowing that no matter what she did or where she went, there would be at least a fifteen minute check on her—a fifteen minute obligation for her to answer, “I’m here!” from inside the shower, to call, “Come in!” from inside her room, or to reply, “I’m well. How are you?” to another nurse with the infamous ‘Are they alive and unharmed?’ clipboard.

“Yeah, it’s around dinner. Killian and I usually just drink something hot on the balcony before I hit the hay…”

 _‘And watch videos on his phone without the staff knowing, but whatever,’_ she omitted.

She had spent the entire lunch hour talking to David, updating him and clueing him in on how this whole process was supposed to work, what the doctor had said, and what programs were like. What she really wanted to do was to actually have some one-on-one time to express just how elated, good, and _loved_ she felt to have Elsa and now David both on her side as well as Killian (whom had mostly kept Merida company during lunch while waiting).

“Oh. Okay, well… I guess this is just goodbye for me then—for now.” Emma could tell he was trying to conceal his disappointment at being so subtly excluded, but went in for a strong bear hug anyway. “I’ll be back here tomorrow.”

“Bring junk food.”

David chuckled. “Will do.” He gave her a smile and walked over to the desk inside the unit where the sign-in sheet had been moved to. When he was done signing out, he held the pen out to Killian, but found him still talking with Emma, her hand in his while she smiled at something he said too far away to hear. David watched her pull him into a hug and noticed how she seemed to melt into him, a tired but content smile on her face. Everything about the two in that moment just seemed so warm and comfortable, and as much as David had a tense relationship with Killian, he was seeing the upside to Killian meaning more and more to Emma.

After all, it was Killian’s encouragement that helped Emma come to terms with reaching out for the help she knew she needed all along. David was just delving through the surface of Emma’s struggles, but Killian had been wading through it all this last week with the sort of guidance and support that any big brother had to appreciate. He had to give Killian some credit because credit was definitely due.

As they walked away from the elevators and down toward the main lobby, David tried to figure out the best way to convey his gratitude.

“Killian,” he started, not bothering to cover up his sentiments with his usually cold, _‘Jones_ ’ greeting. “I just wanted to say, well… Just thank you. Thank you for being there for her when I couldn’t be. When she didn’t _want_ me to be.”

“Mate, it’s not even like that,” replied Killian with a shake of his head, dodging David’s appreciation as if embarrassed. “She wanted all of us to be there for her, but she just wasn’t ready for it yet.”

“I’m trying to be nice and tell you that I appreciate everything you’ve done for her, okay?” David smirked. Countless hours of trying to intimidate Killian and all he had to do was pay the boy a compliment to make him start stuttering. “She made it very clear when we talked that you were a big support. And with visiting her every day, just… Thanks. I’m relieved she has someone good like you around.”

Killian stared at him, words lost. Eventually, he shrugged and stuffed his hands in his pockets and said nonchalantly, “I rather like you being ‘nice’ to me for a change. I could get used to it.”

“Well, don’t,” said David with shake of his head, but smile on his face nonetheless. He remembered what Killian had said earlier in the elevator and before the valet attendant could come back with his car, he asked, “What did you mean that you’ve been through what Emma’s going through?”

Killian was silent for a beat, cockiness discarded for stoicism. He said in a guarded tone, “I mean that as far as people are concerned, you have now been added to the very exclusive and short list of people—only including my family and Emma—that know I’ve had a run-in with mental illness and hospitalization, too. So, I’d appreciate it if you kept it to yourself. Or, at the very least, ensured that your girl doesn’t tell anyone else. I know how relationships work. Trust, sharing, and all that.”

“You’re right. I would like to tell Mary Margaret,” said David, but then he added seriously with a look of something as close to affection as David could muster towards Killian, “but only if I have your permission.”

“You can tell her, mate.”

“Was it bad for you, too? Like Emma?”

Killian tried to smirk, but it appeared more as a grimace. “It’s hard to compare pain, as relatable as it is when you actually share it. But, I can tell you that Emma’s a lot stronger than I was, than I _am_. She’s going to make it out just fine. It might take some time, but I like to think I’m in a decent place in life. I have no doubt she’ll come out of this brilliantly.”

“Her strength blows me away, too,” David agreed.

David’s green truck slowly made its way through the labyrinth of aisles until he exited the driveway. He was lost inside his head, processing everything he’d learned, everything he’d felt about and for Emma.  He was barely visible through the back window, but eventually the trees along the street obscured him and his car until he was completely out of view.

Killian started driving away from the valet podium, but paused at the end of the lane before the exit to wave, as always, at the blonde figure sitting on a bench in the sun behind a wall of hard plastic on the balcony. He couldn’t see anything but her waving back, but he knew she was smiling because she had proven to herself that she could be truthful about her issues; she could confide in others about her pain and release the anxiety and poisonous traces of trauma that she’d bottled up and kept hidden her whole life.

If anyone had anything to say about her situation, about her feelings or actions in taking care of herself, she couldn’t care less. She had her two best friends and her brother on her side.

They knew her secrets and she realized that that bomb she had imagined coming down to fall on her wasn’t really there because they understood her and that’s all she had ever wished for all along.

“Emma?”

She looked towards the voice calling her. Another nurse, no clipboard this time.

“Dr. Talbot’s here. She’d like to see you now if you’re ready.”

“Yeah, no problem,” she said, getting up from her perch by the balcony and heading inside to check in with her doctor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, y'all! I wanted to thank everyone again for sharing their stories, personal struggles, and fun tidbits about themselves with me. It gives me a good sense of who's reading this, enjoying it, and---my wishes answered---actually benefiting and getting some help through this process. As Killian said, we can't compare and judge pain, but we can relate and connect with one another for support. Loneliness is a huge factor in my depression and knowing that there are others out there who find the strength inside themselves (like Emma) to keep on fighting inspires me to keep on living my own story. I'm so proud of every one of you who shared and keep continuing to send me messages and comments about such personal things. Anywho, there's your regular sappy sidenote from me. How about we try this out: Send me four things you love and that gets you through your rougher times. Mine are Pride and Prejudice (Keira Knightley), strawberry ice cream, cats, and 'Ladylike' videos on YouTube. See you next update! *HUGS*


	11. Carefully Constructed Control

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for a little chapter! But I wanted to post something completed while I work on the next to tide everyone over :D Again, sharing in the comments is optional---support, suggestions, and reviews are ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS (can you tell how excited I get?? lol) loved and shared with my friends and family while I squeal and dance around. But, if you feel inclined to share with all of us like you've already been doing, I have a little writing exercise down there and it doesn't have to be nearly as long as my answer was (whoops!<3)

Dr. Talbot called for her. She enunciated it the same way, with an emphasis as if she were having an ‘ah-ha!’ moment and observing something new and fascinating about Emma. She could only hope that it was progress that the doctor was seeing in her patient.

“Hey,” she greeted and bookmarked the new book she’d started reading all last night and day in anxiety over her impending visiting hour with David. She then followed Dr. Talbot into one of the cramped meeting rooms lining the hall. She settled in one of the chairs, too many for such a small room, with—to no surprise—olive colored fabric stretched over it. There was a lot of green in the hospital unit. The pictures of trees posted between the patients’ rooms, bright lime highlights in the leaves from sunlight that didn’t exist that deep into the hospital corridors; the furniture and carpets, all light wood and sage trim; and even the fern shaded wallpaper strips in the common area. Everything was light, beige, and green, and all reflected that same hopeful rejuvenating-aesthetic everywhere a patient could possibly look.

It reminded her of Killian’s carefully chosen flyers for the old MHA movie night they threw and how confident he was that it would have some kind of positive effect, even if only a slight one.

“How are you doing today?” asked Dr. Talbot.

The woman crossed her legs and clasped her hands in her lap, tilting forward in interest like there was nothing she was more invested in—like she didn’t have at least one other patient in the unit. Emma could never tell if Dr. Talbot was genuinely intrigued by her or if it was all just standard protocol.

“I’m good,” she said, her voice a little high-pitched and not quite comfortable yet.

“Good?”

“I’d say ‘great’, but can anyone here really be great?” she joked, feeling herself loosening up.

“You may find yourself feeling better when we reach a therapeutic dose in your medication. Right now is all about patience. So, the nurses tell me you had a new visitor today. How did that go?”

 Normally Emma forced polite smiles at all the staff when they asked her questions, but she didn’t have to try so hard at this one. “My brother came to visit me today. He didn’t know I was admitted.”

“I see. What did he think about your situation?”

“He’s being understanding and just cool about the whole thing. I guess that’s all I can ask for.”

“Having supportive systems in place outside the hospital will aid tremendously in furthering your recovery after you’ve been discharged, so I’m glad to hear it. I’m sensing there was some anxiousness around the situation though.”

“I had just hoped he would get it. I wish he could’ve come here and seen me all ready to go tackle life again—‘recovered’—but I’m not there yet and he was empathetic about that.”

“That’s good. Very good. So, it’s been a few days on the Fluoxetine. You still feel that you’re not ‘ready to go tackle life’?”

“This place,” started Emma, looking at the beige painted walls around them, “it’s a bubble. This isn’t real life in here. Even if I’m okay in here, I’m just going to lose it again out there. I know that now. I’m not ready to go yet. I mean—“ Honesty was the best policy. “—I still feel like scratching myself when I’m uncomfortable inside this bubble. Imagine me back out there with life going Donkey Kong on me and throwing barrels at my face.”

“Have you hurt yourself while being here, Emma?”

“Not like  _that_. I agreed that I wouldn’t when I came here and I haven’t, but I just, I was nervous earlier and I started touching some of my scars. Picking at my hands, my nails. Little stuff that seems normal, but I know how gateway habits work. I know how  _I_  work, so…”

“Well, it sounds like you’re making great strides in becoming very self-aware about your self-harming, and also in not alienating yourself and opening up to the people important to you. That’s a big step—probably one of the hardest when we’re so used to dealing with issues on our own. So, here’s what we’ll do,” Dr. Talbot flipped to a new page on her yellow legal pad, “we’re going to keep you on the Fluoxetine, but increase the dosage. In the meantime, keep attending groups, socializing, and getting out of your room. And, we’ll see if your anxiety about the challenges you might have to face after discharge improves at all. Alright?”

Emma nodded and followed Dr. Talbot out of the room. The woman made her way to the nurses’ desk and started to relay Emma’s new prescription. She walked back to the main room where Mulan sat, Merida with her bright, curly hair nowhere to be seen. She seemed to be contemplating something other than the picture her eyes were focused on across the room and barely noticed Emma approaching.

“Hey,” greeted Emma who plopped down and sprawled out on the couch across from Mulan’s plush chair, cracking her book open again.

“Hi,” she replied, drawn out of her daze. “Did you see your doctor?”

“Yeah. Our visits are short.”

“That’s how they all are. But, you figure, they do this for a living. We might have our own experiences, but the symptoms seem similar enough. The experts probably take one look at us and see everything wrong then just wait for us to realize it, too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. And after we realize it, we can work on them together until we’re all clear to leave this place. It’s how the system works.”

“So, you’re tired of this place, huh?” said Emma, picking up on the subtle sigh in Mulan’s voice.

“Yes and no. I’m  _almost_  ready to leave. My family thinks so, my doctor almost thinks so,  _I_  think so, but not just yet. There are still some things I have to work out. I’m not like Merida. I dwell more.”

“What do you dwell on?” asked Emma curiously. She shut the paperback and put it on the coffee table. She honestly didn’t know too much about Mulan, but with Merida around, it was hard to really address anything without some kind of humor deflating any seriousness clouding over them.

“What could have been,” she answered with downcast eyes. “What  _should_  be. What I have to do instead.”

“Sounds exhausting.”

“It is. I’m ashamed of it, you know… Being here and having my father see me in this place. I don’t like him worrying about me. I’ve always had to be capable. To be able to take care of myself and be on-track. That’s why Merida and I click. We both had to be everything to our families—daughters and, in a way, sons. The difference is that she actually has brothers to take some of the expectation away. But me? I’m an only child in a family that needs me to be strong, but in a world that wants me to be delicate.”

“I hear that. I never exactly got along well with other girls growing up. I got into too many fights, was too blunt. I feel like the world’s a little more accepting of us now versus back then though, yeah?”

“I think so, too. But now, it’s just who I am to be more… reserved with my feelings.”

“What happened, Mulan? If you don’t mind me asking. You know my baggage, but what’s yours?”

The girl twisted her hands in her lap, playing her fingers lightly in a nervous tick that was ultimately harmless. Emma felt a twinge of envy. If only she was hardwired to soothe herself like that instead of programmed to destroy herself when she felt the need to shrink into herself and couldn’t.

“The thing is,” began Mulan, snapping Emma out of her longing for better days, “I was  _fine_. I had everything under control, I had  _myself_  under control. Then… I had this friend,” she continued, “who just blew away every ounce of carefully constructed control I had over my life.” Emma watched Mulan in confusion because she was  _smiling._  “She made me take risks. She made me open up and she made me vulnerable to her, to my own feelings. And, it was almost fun even, being free like that; being wild, no reservations. Being with her was fun, but then she was gone. We all graduated and she moved off with, well…” She stopped and shook her head—Emma wasn’t sure what she was disapproving of. Another person? Herself? All Mulan allowed was, “Let’s just say  _another_  old friend.”

“This friend—was she a girlfriend?”

“No. We didn’t get that far.”

“And this other friend—an ex?”

“Didn’t get that far either.” Mulan frowned. “We were really close though. Philip was like my best friend and I was so in love with him, but then Aurora happened. She came out of the blue and I just lost my head. Then I made the mistake of introducing her to him.”

“And you got shut out of the loop.”

“Three can be a crowd. It’s not easy, open relationships, and it just made better sense not to take a chance of ruining what I had with the both of them. But in the process, I just stopped talking to them…”

Emma could hear the struggle in her voice, the intricately weaved logic between her words. Mulan was a person who battled her emotions with absolutes and rationality; facts and truth as cold and hard as concrete.

But humans didn’t work that way. They felt things that defied sense, they dreamed of futures sometimes bordering the impossible. Emma had come to accept this, but Mulan was still struggling with herself.

Emma asked, “So, you never told her how you felt?”

“Who am I to ruin someone else’s happy ending?”

“What about yours?”

“Please. Are you telling me that before you came here you believed everyone got happy endings?”

Emma frowned and turned her eyes back to the ceiling. “No. No, I didn’t think I deserved one, even if everyone else did.”

“See?”

“I didn’t say I was right about that though.” She pulled herself up and slid her feet beneath her. “I think I was wrong. I do deserve something happy—or else, why would I have come here voluntarily? Why would you have come here if you didn’t imagine that there could be some kind of happy ending for you? Even if it’s not the one you imagine with Aurora.”

Mulan shook her head, a corner of her mouth turning upward at Emma. “Yeah, you’ll definitely be out before me and Merida.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s true. Merida’s stubborn. She hides behind humor and confidence. I’m rigid. I don’t allow exceptions and I don’t entertain fantasies.”

“Not feeling lost or lonely everyday isn’t a fantasy. Look, I hit myself with that ‘no excuses’ mentality all the time. It’s one of the main reasons I’m in here, but talking to you and Merida, you guys should never have to endure that. Everyone here in this place is so hard on themselves. So, if I can come to the conclusion that I deserve even an ounce of kindness and understanding in all of this, there’s no doubt in my mind that you deserve more credit than you’re giving yourself, too.”

“You’re something else, Emma.”

“In a good way, I hope.”

“In a good way,” she nodded. “I’m sorry for getting so over-emotional.”

Emma snorted and assured her, “Emotions are scary, but they’re good. That’s what Killian tells me anyway. Besides, I don’t think you could ever get ‘over-emotional’. You’re a down to earth kind of person, Mulan. And even then, you’re allowed to have your moments. Everyone else in the world does and they just wake up the next day, no regrets, and keep living. There’s no need for us to beat ourselves up about it for eternity.”

“All this wisdom. Your brother should visit more often.”

“It’s not my brother, it’s you guys. I’m learning a lot from the both of you; from everyone in group. Thanks for, y’know, taking me under your wing and all that. My doctor wasn’t too happy with me sleeping away my life in the beginning.”

“We’ve all been there. But, if you’re going to learn anything from me, Emma, just know that as much as everything seems to be getting better, don’t rush it. Don’t rush this time. Make sure you’re truly ready to leave because you don’t want to half-ass your recovery and end up falling again. It’s not worth forcing yourself to handle what you can’t yet.”

“Okay,” nodded Emma, “but if you learn anything from me, it’s that—” she thought about Killian, about what Liam had said to him—“secrets will kill you. Aurora didn’t know how you felt when you stopped talking to her. She doesn’t even know something’s wrong. Maybe telling her is what you need.”

Mulan weighed Emma’s words in silence, but before she could reply, Merida appeared from one of the side rooms behind her own doctor and jogged up, crashing down on the couch next to Emma.

She seemed irritated and ready to rant, but upon seeing both girls quietly staring into space, asked, “You two need to smile more. Where do you think you are—a home for the depressed?”

Mulan rolled her eyes, but smiled nonetheless while Emma let out an unladylike snort which Merida seemed to always appreciate.

“That’s more like it,” said Merida, pleased with herself.

* * *

 

Emma waited for the afternoon to pass, eager to talk to Killian about their lunch with David.

“Hello, darling,” he said, leaning over her shoulder as he usually did when he arrived. She was doodling on some printer paper a nurse had given her with the colored pencils that the occupational therapist let her borrow after their therapy group was over. “Whatcha drawing?”

There was a quick colored sketch of Merida—not exactly photographic, but the bright orange-red hair made it without a doubt recognizable. Littered around the page were suns and trees, flower petals and vines.

“Just an eye,” she replied, shading in the border with a stripe of slate blue.

“Don’t let her fool ya.” Merida didn’t take her eyes off her task—making the smallest paper crane possible out of a corner from Emma’s paper. “There are about three more eyes on the back of that paper and they all have blue irises. Think she’s drawing you, loverboy.”

“My god, Merida.” Mulan shoved her. “Do you ever stop?”

“Nope. I get my persistence from my mum and stubbornness from my dad.”

“What about the obnoxiousness?” asked Emma.

Mulan let out a low, ‘Ohhh,’ and Merida flicked the little crane at her while Emma and Killian ventured off onto the patio.

Killian sat down and gave an uncomfortable sort of smile. “So, David and I might be… friends?”

“Oh, really?” she grinned.

“Almost-friends. I think I finally got the big brother stamp of approval.”

“Well, good. It’s about time. It’s not like you haven’t earned it—and not just with this whole thing and this place. I mean, you’ve had my back since we met, and I know I’m not exactly the most pleasant person to be around when I’m un-caffeinated and stressed out.”

“I’m not exactly a joy to be around either.”

“You get a little broody,” she teased, “but not at all terrible. I mean, at least it’s possible to pull you out of it. Me? Practically have to barricade yourself and throw me packets of instant coffee until I calm down,” she laughed.

“You seem less heavy now,” he noticed. “I missed your laugh.”

“It’s just nice having David know. He was so good to me earlier. He was understanding. I’m just extremely grateful that I have that kind of support from him. I mean, I know I can get that with a really good counselor—just having Dolores listen to me before we came here was monumentally better than me keeping it all in and ignoring the problem—but something about having David know just… helps. Was it like that with you and your family?”

“Honestly, telling my aunt and uncle about the burning first was about as vulnerable as I let myself get with them for a long time, even afterwards. I was just so… stubborn. I didn’t want help and then when I did, I felt uncomfortable talking about it with them. I guess I just felt, I don’t know—embarrassed?”

Emma recalled Killian whenever his mood fell—brooding, as she’d said, and so hard on himself for feeling so low in the first place; like he had some kind of control over himself that way and was failing. Him, with all his insight and guidance, fell prey to his own darkness every now and then and she was happy to be able to bring him out of it or at least ease it away. Now, imagining the same but so much more intense, so much more confused, hopeless, and alone in his struggle, and so young, too. She was proud of him for showing strength to do it himself.

“So, I started opening up to counselors instead. A little to my doctor in the hospital—just to get me discharged and out of there. Then more to the outpatient program therapists. Then to my own personal MFT. Finally, I started opening up to my family about things.”

“Our experiences… How can they feel so similar, but be so different?”

“Pain is universal. Anger. Loneliness and shame. We all experience it and, yes, in different ways, but I like to think there are simpler solutions to them all that we all can take as first steps. Sometimes bloody difficult simple solutions, but always another option even when it doesn’t seem like there is one. I’d know. I thought that branding my arm was the only option—turned out there was an entire field that gave an alternative.”

“And what ‘simpler solution’ helped you?”

“Sharing. Confessing. Emma, my whole process of being open and not secretive about everything I was going through took me  _months_. That’s why I say that you’re doing brilliantly, love. It’s been nearly a week and the bravery you’re showing in trying to be more honest with yourself—with the staff, your friends, even Merida and Mulan, too—it just never ceases to amaze me how much you try when you put your mind to something.”

“Trying isn’t succeeding,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Not always, but it’s hope.”

“Well, I  _hope_  you have something gummy, sour, and coated with sugar in your jacket pocket.”

“You ask and I shall procure,” he smirked. “But only if you tell me about your groups today.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just give me the candy,” she dismissed, patting down his pockets to see where he was hiding them. Right pocket. She snaked her arm around him and stole them.

“So, what was today’s question?”

“We have a new Marriage Family Therapist in the unit. The old therapist left yesterday. I think they transferred over to the Out-patient program. Before they left, they said they hoped I entered it like they’d see me again or something. But, yeah, the new one is nice. A little more saavy and inclusive. We said names, pronouns, and ‘Who would we most like to meet?’”

“And you picked?”

“Susanna Kaysen.”

“ _Girl, Interrupted_  Susanna Kaysen?”

“Yep. My new roommate came with a library, so I figured I’d finally figure out what you’re always going on about between movie and book differences. All I have to say so far is, why the  _hell_  did they keep Susanna’s name the same in the movie? Her life in the book and that movie are  _so_  different. That’s like someone taking my name and rewriting a whole new me and new life then putting it in theatres.”

“ _At last,”_  exclaimed Killian to the sky, “she sees!”

“Knew you’d like that,” she grinned.

“So, new roommate, new MFT. What else? How was psychotherapy?”

“It was bizarre. I made another woman cry. No one was talking to the social worker, so I piped up and… I kind of just started rambling.”

“What’d you talk about?”

“Basically, all I said was that I got to a point where I felt like I had to be strong all the time and that one day I started getting tired of it. That the night before I admitted myself, I was exhausted. I felt like giving up. I felt like a failure because I couldn’t keep myself from drowning anymore.”

“Sounds like you hit a chord.”

“And another man nodded when I was talking, so I guess I said something right.”

“It’s not about saying something ‘right’. It’s about telling your truth and it just so happened that you were speaking theirs, too. Even when they couldn’t.”

“You know, Mulan told me today about her past. She’s lost and heartbroken and I totally understood where she was coming from even though I didn’t get my heart broken like she did. I guess we all are connected a little through our pain. I told her what you told me; what Liam told you.”

“About what, love?”

“Secrets. Keeping things bottled in and internalizing. Then she told me not to rush my recovery.”

“Glad you heard it from someone other than me. Maybe you’ll take it easier in here, hopefully?”

“I’m trying not to be so focused on when I’m leaving, but on how I’m feeling. Feelings are still scary though.”

“You’ve never really had time to process them. You’ve always had to survive—to be careful of what you let in because everything might rush in at once. But just like counseling, we have to make time for it. We have to give them their own space or else they’ll come back ten times stronger and with a vengeance. You’re in a playground for your emotions and troubles right now. Do what Mulan said and don’t rush it. But, you don’t need to hear any more from me,” he smiled, eyes averting to his hands. “Sounds like you’re doing just fine on your own.”

“I’m not on my own,” she said lightly. “I’ve got you.”

He looked up and met her eyes, his own illuminated in the night from the light pouring out the hospital windows beside them. She thought of all the blues she’d blended earlier trying to, as Merida had called her out, recreate and capture the pretty hue of his eyes.

As much as she wanted to take her time and rejuvenate, she missed her spot at the drop off; she missed the roaring sea lapping beneath the cliff and the silvery sheen on the deep ocean in front of her. Killian’s eyes reminded her of that—the color, their expression when they sat there in the wind together, their intensity when they looked at her the way he was right now.

“And I’ve got you, too.”

Maybe it was something about her mood today, maybe it was the meds. Who knew? All that was clear was that the deeper layer to Killian's response, the weight of affection and trust in it, didn't scare any part of her this time. So, she laced their hands for no reason other than she felt it was right and after the initial shock seeped away, Killian held hers back.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just needed some proper Mulan moments in this fic and this isn't the last we'll hear from her story either. Now that Emma is starting to become more comfortable with herself--all parts of herself--I feel like it's time that she started embracing *cough* certain things in her life that make her happy. Blue eyes and what not *winkwink* I'm a dork lol Let's keep opening up, yeah? I personally love it and for people who browse through the comments after these exercises, I'm sure it's enlightening, comforting, or helpful and guiding, too! 
> 
> If you could tell yourself in the past something comforting, something hopeful and to look forward to---What are a few things you'd say? 
> 
> I would tell my 19 year old self: You've been asking your doctor whether this is as good as it gets, and the answer is NO. It gets better---WAY better than you can even imagine right now. And, you'll go to bed every night not believing how far you've come; how your skin doesn't hurt anymore and how everything's nearly faded from sight. It's not your fault that things feel wrong because in this chapter of your life, things ARE a little wrong. Your doctor isn't a good fit for you, but you'll find one you end up loving to open up to. Your current medication you're trying isn't the most effective combination yet and when you get there, god, will everything feel almost effortlessly manageable. Your life--yes, yours!---will feel manageable. You just have to keep trying at school, at work, with (very important) connecting to people, with being kind and, most importantly, patient to yourself. Also, start listening to Coffee With Chrachel and getting into bath bomb culture because nothing feels more "Yas queen self-care" than taking a long bath, listening to podcasts, and giggling and smiling while wearing a bright turquoise $1 clay mask on your face. Treating yourself makes a bigger difference than you currently think. XOXO<3
> 
> And XOXO to all of you, too


	12. Give Yourself a Chance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A special, special, special shout out to my two darlings nickillian and euphoric-melancholyy for helping me get this chapter out. I wrote it all this morning and I hope you enjoy it because this is probably as close as I'm going to get it to what I wanted it to be. Thank you again to all of you guys for your support. It really helps me write this story and figure out the things I need to say through these characters, too. Alright, happy reading!

It had to be early when she woke up to a dark room. The blinds in the room were always closed now for Emma’s seemingly always sleeping and solemn roommate. Which is why she was rarely in it during the day now and always out with Merida and Mulan getting some sunshine in the day room. Still, she couldn’t see little beads of light poking through the stringed narrow panels sealed shut against each other behind the glass meant for her protection. She stretched and let out a muffled yawn. It took a night or two to get used to having a roommate again, but she was quickly reminded of how to co-exist in a single room with another person and easily read the situations as they presented themselves—when to linger and keep silent company, when to give space, how to hint that  _she_  needed space. Mostly, her roommate kept her back to Emma’s corner and rarely did she ever move to participate in activities. The girl was agoraphobic, she’d told Emma that right away, but Emma also sensed that staying put in their room went beyond the fear, panic, and discomfort of having to stray from the residential halls. Merida called her roommate Rapunzel, but in all the versions of the story Emma knew, Rapunzel was always kept in her tower by someone else, trapped and away from the world.

Maybe in a sense, this girl was trapped in their room by her own mind, or maybe adding depression to the mix didn’t help motivate her to join the programs outside their hall. Either way, Emma understood how ‘checking out’ worked and how necessary it was in protecting yourself. So she let Rapunzel be and filled her in on all the things they did in their programs, and held hope that soon enough, Rapunzel would wake up with a spirit that felt calmer and a forgiving and merciful mind once she’d gotten enough rest and the change in her medication kicked in. Until then, it was up to her to let down her hair and reach out for help.

* * *

 

 

After another hour of shifting and turning and flipping this way and that way, Emma finally gave up on sleep and pushed herself up off the mattress. Her legs swung numbly over the side of the bed and she sat for a moment with her eyes closed, letting the blood traveling through her pick up the pace before reaching down to her bare, wooden nightstand and carefully pulling out contents from each drawer. She grabbed the first two items on top of the piles in the bottom drawer—left side for pants and leggings, right side for all long-sleeved shirts to hide her arms—then her toiletries and felt along the walls for the bathroom.

She waited until she was inside, door quietly clicked shut, to finally turn on the light. When she did, she caught sight of herself in the plastic edged mirror above the sink—no jagged corners to threaten the safety of a determinedly self-destructive patient. She’d resented all the precautions in the beginning of her stay, but now, there was almost a sort of comfort in it because it gave the feeling that she was in a place where no one kept secrets to avoid discomfort or to preserve politeness. It was all here to help, and instead of screaming ‘Distrust’ on everything safety-proof, it rather seemed more understanding. There was no way to pull the wool over the hospital’s eyes just as easily as it was to trick everyone she knew back in her regular life.

Everything about the hospital was becoming more comforting. Even the uniform pants, ‘Patient-Blue’ colored and all, were growing on her and, as the nurse had told her on her first day, they really were more comfortable than any of the leggings and jeans she’d brought. So she slipped into those first, training her eyes on the tiled floor instead of her legs as she was accustomed to doing after a bad spell or those disastrously friendly times with the cold, sadistic metal companions in her nightstand drawer back at home. Then she swapped out her long-sleeved thermal for another simple long-sleeved top; again, avoiding the bright expanse of skin on her arms and also the mirror in front of her.

The rest was routine from there. She wet her toothbrush, pulled out the little roll of Colgate they’d given her, and brushed her teeth while examining herself in the mirror.

It seemed like everything about this place was designed to make you take a real good look at yourself. She didn’t see any of the other patients with makeup, but when she was packing up to come here, that was the last thing on her mind. Usually, she was on it with the tools that made her look ‘normal’, but in the state she was in when she finally came to the point of choosing the hospital over whatever dark and unforgiving option the demons in her mind wanted to trick her into believing, appearance was not a concern.

The state of her skin was obvious of that.

No, here, she  _had_  to be herself, all the way down to the pillow-crunched hair falling to the sides of her flushed face with eyes not as dull as they once were. Here, there were no flat-irons to straighten the bumps in her hair even when she couldn’t straighten out her life; no concealer to hide an agonizing night of sleep, or lack thereof; or skin serums and creams to calm the swollen, puffy redness around her eyes from a heart-stabbing crying spell. All she had was some face wash which she followed up with in her morning routine, some lotion, and a tube of generic chapstick the hospital had included in her essential hygienic products.

But really, that’s all she needed; more importantly, that’s all she wanted. She didn’t want to cover up her anguish, she didn’t want to have to go that far to hide her pain. She was who she was and the hospital, the patients, and even her loyal visitor, Killian, would have to deal with it. It was empowering in a sense that all these people wanted to talk to her, be around her, make her laugh then laugh together with her and she didn’t have to try so damn hard.

Killian still came to her here, even without her emotional armor on. And whereas before she used to feel so exposed and sensitive, she was slowly and surely becoming more resilient as she gave her life more time to heal, to work on itself, and to exist without self-imposed guilt, resentment, or isolation.

After she ran her fingers through her hair and flopped some of it to the side, she was finally satisfied and gathered her things to return to her nightstand. She crept back into her room and discarded her clothes, turning back to fix the two thin but surprisingly warm blankets and starched white sheets on her little bed, all the while trying not to trip as her eyes readjusted to the dark.

Eventually, she made it outside to the hallway where the lights were already on full-blast again for the incoming day and started down the hall towards the medication room with her book in hand. Now when she looked at the windows, there was that familiar eerie blue glow overtaking the sky outside and no line when she arrived at the medication room. They broke the foil backing of the pill package and let it drop into a small Dixie up on the counter then filled another up with a swig of water, and as if in an express lane, she took it quickly and found herself first up for vitals right after. Again, her blood pressure was a little high—“Hm… We’ll just take it again once you’ve woken up a bit,” the nurse would always say, but at this point, Emma didn’t know or care much about why her heart was so hyper in the mornings. Just a natural state, she assumed.

Further down the hall, she found the day room with a couple other early rising patients scattered amongst the tables with decaf coffees and teas, but settled on one of the plusher armchairs to lounge in and read her book while she waited for all the other patients, Mulan, and Merida to come through for breakfast.

She read for two hours straight, her eyes and mind slightly fatigued by the concentration. But it was all so fascinating, reading about other people’s hospital stays. She’d finished  _Girl, Interrupted_  and now was reading, funny enough,  _It’s Kind of a Funny Story_ , the book the movie they’d watched on Movie Night was based on. It was an entirely different experience  _reading_  people’s thoughts, impressions, and from their perspectives on the mental health world rather than watching what a director plucked out from the original material and made a movie out of. It was fuller and more understanding of the little but intricate parts of it all.

Part of her thought that if she had let herself be open to it in the beginning, and she’d read the books Killian had recommended to her earlier, maybe she would’ve been to the hospital sooner. Maybe she would’ve seen a counselor and therapist sooner. Maybe all of her progress could’ve been made sooner.

“Last time I checked, you were supposed to  _read_  the book when it was opened. Not stare off into space contemplating life,” said Merida in a scratchy, sleepy voice. She fell into the cushions of the couch across from Emma and let her eyes close and head tilt back, rubbing them and yawning wide and long.

“I’ve been reading for hours waiting for your ass to finally roll out of bed,” smirked Emma.

Merida rubbed the sleepiness from her eyes then finally looked at Emma with a tired, blank expression. They stared at each other in silence, a proper stand-off, until Merida broke character and chuckled, “I’m too tired to come up with something, so pretend I said something smart back.” They laughed and waited for Mulan to join them, but she didn’t emerge from her own hall until the breakfast carts had been rolled in.

“So, what do you think we’ll be doing today?” asked Emma.

Mulan snorted, “The same things we do every day.”

“Hey—if Emma wants to be excited about groups and actually  _learn_  something from them, let her be. I’m telling ya, she’ll be out of here before us.”

“Oh stop.” Emma blushed.

“It is true though. I agree with Merida,” said Mulan between sips of her orange juice. “The nurses and therapists take note of the things you say in our groups. We’re all under observation, all the time. They don’t simply keep us here, they’re watching until we show signs of progress and, well, you’re making it, Emma.”

Emma stared down at her peppermint tea thinking about how soon she might be able to do this with Killian and Elsa at her table, in the café, with a nice, old, and heavy in her hands ceramic mug instead of at a hospital with a stubby plastic one.

Merida was explaining to them all about how tracking worked and the proper way to hold a bow when a physician Emma had never spoken to before called her name.

She followed them down one of the halls into a medical room where the physician said, “I just wanted to check up on you and see how you’re healing.” She had a short curly bob the color of beach sand and kind eyes, deep and brown, and they were all Emma could stare at in confusion while she tried to understand what was going on.

The physician offered, “You can put your clothes over on that chair then if you could lay down on the table—” She hadn’t finished her sentence; instead, she turned to the cushioned examination table and pulled down a new sheet of thin, crinkling paper for Emma to lay down on and to give her some privacy even when she was about to lose it all.

Reluctantly, Emma reached for the bottom hem of her shirt and pulled up, suddenly very uncomfortable as each scratch on her stomach was exposed to the light. She glanced at her arms, spotted and dotted with browning scabs across them and tossed her shirt onto the chair by the edge of the room.

She’d been self-harming for over a year and with that came a sort of acceptance over her situation—with  _that_  also came a denial. She was practiced at changing clothes and not allowing her eyes to linger on her horrible handiwork; to better help her pretend that everything was fine so she could convince everyone that everything was normal and totally okay. Since she’d gotten here, she’d avoided taking a good look at herself and now she was about to let someone see her pain and anguish in its entirety. There was nothing she could do to bury the shame back down in her, so she drew down her pants and discarded them with her shirt; immediately going to the table and hopping on as if defiantly and purposely not asking if she had to remove her bra and underwear, too.

After that, it was all gentle lifting and turning of her arms; soft prodding and brushes of gloved hands across her calves and alongside the sensitive skin of her stomach. She didn’t bother to hide her grimace and stared up at the florescent lights above, glancing at all the cabinets and drawers with their locked keyholes, waiting for it to all be over.

Although it was quick, it was still longer than Emma would have liked. “They’re all healing very nicely. And, I’m glad to see that there aren’t any new ones.”

Not everyone who self-harmed followed the rules of abstaining during their stay in the hospital. But before Emma could move to put on her shirt, the physician said in a less clinical, more human voice, “Don’t do this to yourself anymore, okay?”

It wasn’t a reprimand. It was almost a plea of compassion and understanding of how deep Emma’s pain really went. It was the most personal response she’d gotten from any of the staff since being admitted there and it  _hurt._

She swallowed, eyes fixed at the spotted ceiling, while her eyes started to burn and the physician told her she was free to put her clothes back on and rejoin her friends. In a last ditch effort to keep herself composed, she stopped breathing and sat up, counting the seconds until the physician left her. When she did, Emma exhaled a small sob and squeezed her eyes shut, running her hands through her hair and cupping them over her ears until she couldn’t hear anything, not the patients or nurses or fax machine outside the room.

And she didn’t cry. She wanted to, but instead she sat there, slightly defeated and brought her arms in front of her and turned them, taking in every single scabbed line on them. She slid down from the table and looked down at the sides of her stomach, at the tops of her thighs and down to her calves.

They  _were_  healing up nicely, but there were just so many of them.

And she had done them.

And now someone had seen them all, as bad as it could get, but she didn’t judge her. She didn’t dismiss her with a snooty remark or glance. She’d been met with compassion and she supposed that if a stranger could be kind to her while she was like this, then she ought to try to be, too. As hard as it was, she had to try not to hate herself because like the physician said, there  _weren’t_  any new ones and there could’ve been.

But she wasn’t in the mood to finish breakfast anymore, so she dressed, clutched her book to her chest, and took the roundabout way back to her room, leaving Merida, Mulan, and her tray to wait for her while she curled up on her bed and threw the covers over her head. Emma nestled into the warmness and willed herself to leave everything behind, to leave her shame and pain, her embarrassment, her surprise and gratefulness for the kindness of the physician to actually say something as caring as that.

The only problem with making friends in the unit was that you had people who were concerned about your wellbeing when even you didn’t care about yourself. Especially in this place where people were so much kinder and nicer to other people’s pain than their own, Emma didn’t want that right now. She closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around herself and counted her breathing. She breathed in, held it—1, 2, 3, 4—and let it all out; repeating again and again, as quietly and undetectably as she could so her roommate couldn’t hear, until her body relaxed. And when her thoughts—lingering evil things battling for dominance over the comforting and soothing ones—subsided, she fell out of consciousness. For hours, she forgot who she was, where she was, what she’d done to herself, and even how much better things could go from there if she kept at it. Everything was lost, everything was numb, and everything in her and Rapunzel’s room was silent, quiet, and dark.

* * *

 

 

At some point, breathing must’ve gotten too difficult under the covers because she woke up with the blankets dragged back down under her chin. She instinctually turned her head towards her roommate’s bed, but found it in disarray and empty. Even Rapunzel had to eat and lunch was usually her breakfast.

Emma was just adjusting to her new privacy when a nurse knocked softly on the door and came to her bedside to tell her that she had a visitor and that her lunch was waiting for her. She felt her whole body perk up to the promise of Killian waiting out there for her and slid out of bed, not bothering to make it this time.

Killian was leaning against a pillar in front of the hall when he noticed her coming towards him out of the corner of his eye, but before he could even say a word, she hooked her arms around his waist and pulled him to her, wordlessly burying her face into his jacket while his face grew serious with her sudden need for a hug and to hide her face. He didn’t press her just yet. She was private with her emotions and he knew how it embarrassed her to be so vulnerable around people she didn’t fully trust, so he brought his arms around her, too, and pulled her even closer.

She was having a tough day which he knew would inevitably come. Emma shifted her head to rest her temple against his chest, finally showing a tearless and neutral expression to the world after fighting so hard not to break down in his arms while a whole room of visitors and patients waited next to them. He slid a hand up to push back the curtain of hair falling in front of her face and leaned back a little, trying to get a look at her.

“Let’s go out there,” he said, comfortingly smoothing back her hair again. She nodded under his chin and let go of him, straightening out and letting out a strong huff to steel herself against the crowd of people they had to walk through.

Despite him reaching for her hand first to lead them through the throng of people, she took the lead and weaved them through the families who were gathering around tables to have lunch.

“Love, don’t you want to grab your lunch first?”

“No. Leave it,” she answered, pulling him after her to the door at the back.

They went to their usual spot on the balcony, a designated area that the other patients vacated when visiting hours came around, now accustomed to Emma and her visiting friend. She sat at the end of the bench, turning to face him fully, pulling her legs up and criss-crossing them. Her hand still hung loosely in his while he sat and turned as much as he could towards her, too.

“No lunch. Well—” he reached into his pocket and pulled out a box of mini chocolate peppermints, “I suppose you won’t be wanting these then,” he teased, holding them in front of her and trying to tantalize some happiness back into her eyes.

A corner of her lips quirked up in a smile, but ultimately not even her favorite treats could snap her out of what was going on through her head. He gave a small, sad smile back and put the box down beside them and grabbed her other hand.

“You know what they say about progress, darling.”

He waited for her to say something, a dry joke or some dark sarcasm about falling on your ass after stepping forward then having to step back, but all she gave him was a defeated sigh and her thumbs grazing across the tops of his hands as if she were trying to comfort herself through him.

“Not every day is going to feel good,” he said honestly.

“I really messed up, Killian. I messed myself up with this whole… with the scratching and cutting and…” She didn’t finish, she couldn’t. She didn’t know how to or what else to say because words could only capture so much of the pain her body plainly showed she was in.

She let go of one of his hands and with some hesitation, reached for the sleeve of her shirt.

She pulled up her sleeve slowly then faster, like ripping off a bandaid, until each healing wound showed. She didn’t look at him though. She didn’t want to remember what his face looked like when he saw this side of her she wished never existed. But she’d seen him and all of his old scars, and now he’d seen part of her, too.

The underside of her forearm had skinny, dotted lines from where the scabs were starting to fall away. There was pink skin under those parts that had been washed away in the shower or just worn off from her clothes. Faded pink slivers of lines remained in their wake, a reminder that for a moment they were there and she had caused it.

“I had to show a doctor today and if a stranger can see what I do to myself then it makes sense for you to know what you’re dealing with, too.”

“Not  _what_ , you mean  _who_. You’re a real person with real feelings, Emma. Sometimes, too real. And, you don’t ‘do’ this to yourself. You did. Once. But now you don’t and that’s what matters.”

“The worst part though? I got upset this morning about them and my first instinct when it was all starting to become too much was to just do it again. What kind of fucked up logic is that? To  _add_  to what had me so upset in the first place. It just doesn’t make any goddamn sense!”

“It’s how we cope, Emma. It’s not good at all… It’s not healthy, but it served its unintentional function--stopping the way that’s hurting us. You can’t be too hard on yourself about it. You’re trying to overcome a habit.”

“I get upset and then I start to fiend for ways to hurt myself like it’s a drug.”

“Drugs do the same thing. Just like alcohol. I hate my father, but I understand that he had some issues going on with him and his only solution to numb it was to drink himself to death even if he felt like hell the next day.”

“I feel like a full-blown addict, Killian.”

“Then you must understand how proud I am of you. Especially with everything that you have been going through right now with all these changes and challenges that keep pushing you out of your comfort zone. You’re so strong and you’re clever, Emma, and driven and determined… If you really wanted to, if you were anything like  _me_  back when I was admitted, you’d be finding a way to betray that contract they make you sign about not hurting yourself here. Did you?”

“Hurt myself? No,” she sighed. “I slept the whole day away and felt sorry for myself though.”

“But the point is that you didn’t hurt yourself. You honored an agreement with people you don’t even know, with a hospital that ultimately can’t stop you. You followed the rules and kept your promise to them, to  _yourself_. You took a long nap, so what? A few hours lost to sleep is extremely better than another cut or scratch that’s going to take days or weeks to heal up.”

“Elsa told me once that she had to ‘re-hardwire’ her brain to stop her panic attacks. Did you have to do that, too?”

Killian cradled her arm in both his hands, brushing his thumb over one long scratch and trying to control the pain he felt for her. He could never want this for anyone, but especially not for Emma. His heart was breaking by into pieces the longer he looked at her. He didn’t want her to feel worse, so he hid his sadness for her and sighed.

“Re-hardwire.” He slid his hands back down her arm and lifted her hand to place a quick kiss on it then returned it back to rest on her knee so fast, she’d barely had time to process the gentle gesture before he continued, “When you’re so used to doing it, when it’s natural and habit, it’s the first route your mind takes. We get used to burning or punching, stabbing, scratching—all of it, when things are so painful you can’t stand it anymore. Then your mind starts telling you that  _every_  situation that makes you uncomfortable needs to be handled that way and soon, it’s the fastest route out of that situation.”

“So what? We have to learn to take the harder one, the longer solution?” she asked.

“Breathe, walk, to talk it out or write. I had to learn to distract myself in better ways or to focus on goals that I could achieve quickly and others that I’d have to work for. And, to trust everyone and myself again; to love other people and myself again. I had to unlearn an entire habit until I was clean for so many months, then so many years, that I stopped craving it. I still feel it sometimes though. Rarely and mostly when I’m really angry, but I stop and think to myself, it’s almost cheating in a way—cheating my progress, cheating myself, my body, and my health. Yes, I had to re-wire my brain, but it was okay. It was hard, but I knew it was the right thing for me because if I didn’t think anyone deserved to feel or struggle this way then I shouldn’t want it for myself. And, ultimately, if I kept doing it then I was making it okay for someone I care about to do it, too.”

Killian looked Emma in the eye and smiled.

“You’re going to stop because you have a big heart, Emma.  One day, years from now when you’ve been clean so long you don’t even remember the last time you  _thought_  about doing it, you’re going to inspire someone else who needs the reminder to stay clean, too. Then they’re going to give hope to someone else. Then someone else will be inspired by their story and their example. And that’s how we make a difference. You and I aren’t alone. We have each other and you’ll  _always_  have me, but we need to make it through this, love. We need to graduate and we need to do what we set off to do because we need to reach out to people so that they can learn to reach back when they’re ready. And, the only way to save other people’s lives is to save yours first, and I have no doubt that you can do it because you’re here. You made it one more day today, through one more uncomfortable situation, without hurting yourself. Or anyone else, for that matter.”

She always knew Killian was independent and she suspected that he was just as determined as a child, too, and to think of all the times his father made him feel smaller, like he wasn’t worth anything but to be beaten or screamed at. Now, he was here in front of her and she saw the kind, compassionate man he’d  _changed_  into. Not the angry teenager who fought with fists and words to destroy the world around him as he would himself. No, Killian was proof that you could go to your darkest place, you could be your darkest self, but you could still manage to turn everything in your life and yourself around, even with a few stumbles, mistakes, and slip ups.

“Even if you had slipped up today, Swan. Resetting the counter of the days you’ve been clean isn’t a bad thing as long as you keep trying to get that number up again. Because after each mistake, I bet you, you’ll find that the intervals between get longer and the days without hurting will get shorter.”

 To make it all better, he was an example that you could be there to help other people, too.

* * *

 

 

Visiting hour was over and Killian left, promising to bring back donuts for Emma, Merida, and Mulan when he came back in the evening.

Next on Track A’s agenda was their afternoon Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, or ‘DBT’ as everyone always said in that same chipper tone. It made sense to Emma though, the program was so positive and dealt with a lot of her favorite and most familiar coping skill: mindfulness. Sometimes they had worksheets where they’d plan their first days out of the hospital, to stay organized (“self-management skills”). Or sometimes more reflective exercises that broke down their harmful habits like binge eating, procrastination, oversleeping, substance abuse, or—in Emma’s case—self-harming. This challenged them to find alternative ways to cope. The hardest part of today’s exercise was determining why exactly they immediately went to these behaviors.

The best she could come up with when she had been asked to share was that her self-harming was a familiar pain. One that she had been conditioned by others and herself to endure. One that she used when she felt all that emotion threatening to swallow her up for making those mistakes that she didn’t forgive herself for when she really needed to be merciful but wasn’t.

When pressed further, it donned on her at least part of the reason  _why_.

“And why do you think you do that, Emma?”

Everyone was staring at her, but she cleared her throat and said slowly at first, “I think… I expect more from myself. And, when I hurt myself, maybe it’s like… a  punishment for a mistake I made or the stupid thing I said. I punish myself for letting myself feel low in the first place sometimes, too.”

And when they went back around again talking about what they could do differently, she thought of Elsa and what she did when she was overwhelmed, stressed, or even when she felt absolutely mortified.

“My friend closes her eyes and takes a deep breath then makes some kind of humming noise, like she’s about to start singing something. She said it clears her head when she focuses on the sound and that she technically did react and do something about what just happened… She just didn’t let herself get swept away by panic.”

“Sometimes an audible noise like tapping your fingers on a table, or singing, or, yes, even cursing—” the therapist was cut short.

“Fuck yeah!” cheered Merida. Everyone, including the therapist laughed, but when order was restored the therapist continued.

“It helps because it’s a momentary fixation on something other than what is making you feel uncomfortable. For people who self-harm, the distraction is a tactile sensation—”

Emma paid close attention.

When she was out in public, she would press the sharp tip of her pen into her thumb or squeeze the jagged edges of her keys into her palm. Anything to distract. 

“—and for substance abuse, the altering effects on your perception are essentially a distraction, too.”

“In a way,” added Mulan who sat back with crossed arms, “even just the hope that it’ll take whatever is uncomfortable away is enough to keep doing it. That’s how the behavior forms; how we make our habit.”

“And by doing these healthier distractions, we…?” the therapist led on.

Emma raised her hand to finish.

“We’re giving ourselves a chance to be better.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's amazing to me how many people are all here to see Emma and Killian's journey through not only issues of mental health and supporting one another, but also their own personal love story.
> 
> For people who may be wondering when things are going to kick off for them, I have big plans for them as soon as Emma gets out of the hospital---and her getting out is NOT a spoiler because we all knew our baby girl was strong enough to do it all along. 
> 
> For this chapters conversation, I'm wondering what films, books, TV, characters, etc. helped you understand mental illness better? Or maybe just good representation? How did they resonate with you? I always reference to something in here, my favorites are Girl, Interrupted, Prozac Nation, and It's Kind of a Funny Story. But what are yours? 
> 
> Help a gal out, I need to add some good mental health goodness to my reading/watching list.
> 
> Take care sweeties!


	13. Days, Minutes, Seconds

Killian yawned again.

His mind felt fuzzy in the sense that every word his professor spoke was turned into a deconstructed mess of familiar sounding terms and unfamiliar garbled nonsense. The new material they were going over didn’t make his statistics class any more exciting. After a sleepless night of turning, tossing, and constantly readjusting his ‘sad’—by Emma’s definition—pillow  around four o’clock that morning, he was sure that his mind had wandered him into certain exhaustion for the rest of the day.

The sleeplessness didn’t bother him so much because today he wouldn’t make the trip down to the hospital for Emma’s lunch. David was going and bringing Mary Margaret, too, with Emma’s consent, and Killian felt it best to give up at least one of his visits for the day. But he wondered how she was doing there; if she still felt alone, if her scars were still the source of that loneliness, and hoped that David and Mary Margaret could offer her some comfort.

He liked Mary Margaret and knew enough from his new conversations with David that she had a familiarity with the mental health healing process. He’d already had his suspicions based on her suggestions and the information she brought to their MHA meetings. Not that knowing anything in particular about the field meant anything personal, but he’d heard Mary Margaret and Ruby talking rather openly about Mary Margaret’s daily calorie and nutrition intake app on her phone and about the subject of eating disorders in general with Dorothy. Killian’s intuition pointed him in the direction of Mary Margaret possibly having some experience with them, and the fact that she had directly asked him ahead of time if Emma’s visitors list at the hospital was very strict and if she needed to be added because sometimes they were lenient, he surmised that Mary Margaret knew the system too well for a Communications major. She either knew someone or knew personally how it all worked, and now that she’d been told parts of Killian’s own history through David… Well, he only hoped that if she felt the need to connect with anyone about her experiences, she could come to him, too.

But Mary Margaret wasn’t what kept him up all night. It was the thrilling fact that Emma had opened up to him about her most private part of herself, her self-harming, but also the immensely troubling reality that they were really there and he’d finally seen it for himself. Her injuries weren’t a concept anymore; they weren’t imaginings on her arms under her long sleeves. They were real and, like Elsa had once told Emma, they hurt to look at especially as someone who knew how heavy each mark felt against your skin and on your spirit.

He wished he could spare her from it—from ever having experienced this, from ever having to experience the hurt that healing inevitably brings after you decide to stop, but it wasn’t something he could control. He couldn’t do that work for her, and the best possible thing for him to do now was to stay by and support her; tell her the truth when she needed to hear it, but be gentle and sensitive about it when she was reluctant to accept anything else than the familiar, vicious thoughts that had plagued her for years.

Finally, he’d managed to drag himself back to his room and dumped his bag and textbook on the ground beside his desk. After he shed his jacket, he paused, his curiosity taking over, and walked over to his mirror, angled his arm forefront, and pulled up the sleeve over his shoulder. Underneath resided every mark he’d ever made. Even the earliest and most tentative wounds still lay pressed to his skin in dark pigments; blotches from lit cigarettes and heated lighters, anything sharp and edged. Some were slightly puffed up from when he’d been particularly cruel to himself.

They weren’t going away any time soon. Maybe years from now, they’d fade away into slight marks on his arm, but from the first moment he’d hurt himself, he had wanted it to show. He wanted to feel a new manifestation of his pain, something that maybe hurt worse than what he felt aching inside his chest and the evil urgings inside his numbed, hollowed mind. He wanted to see what the hurt inside himself had looked like and now, years later, he could still see the remains.

Over the years, there had been plenty of times when he regretted it so fully it nearly sent him spiraling again, just as Emma had experience the day before, but what he really regretted wasn’t just doing it in the first place.

It was for continuing to hurt himself for as long as he did. For not allowing himself the chance to heal when he’d had so many people, counselors, family, strangers and new friends from support groups, all encouraging him on and trying to shine some light on his darkness. Wishing you had never done something was normal. It was human to regret that first misstep that led you down a path you realized in hindsight wasn’t the way you would’ve wanted to take now. But, the amount of time following that path is what made him cringe even years later.

All that time spent torturing himself physically because processing his emotions was too much too soon; all that time scarring himself because he felt just as scarred on the inside and didn’t want to let anything else in that could maybe take it away. Maybe he wasn’t ready, that’s what he had to tell himself because what other reason could there be to keep hurting yourself for as long as he did. It was the kindest answer he could give himself—it was the answer he would give Emma is she ever asked herself the same question, and rule of thumb, if it was honest and true enough for a loved one then maybe if he loved himself, it could be enough, too.

He took one last hard look, this time letting the feeling of accomplishment come to him instead because he had done it. He’d done one of the hardest things a person could do; he’d learned to love himself again, to give himself a chance even when he was his own worst critic and warden. And, to be honest, it was a long process with twists and turns, steps forward and huge knocks back. The trip wasn’t anything linear at all, but it was his own personal journey and he’d eventually learned to have enough faith in the hope of others until he’d found enough hope in himself to stay strong and stay clean.

He was grateful that he had become someone Emma could trust, someone who could truly empathize and understand, and only his experiences—his father’s abuse, his mother’s suicide, his own attempts to avoid killing himself by hurting himself in other ways… It was only his experiences that could have given him the strength and knowledge to know how to help Emma help herself.

And to him, that made the difficulty of surviving all worth it.

* * *

 

 

When she was called to meet with a physician to examine her scars, it was around the same time of morning as the day before; the sky outside starting to turn the darkness away just as she was learning to do with the start of every new day, too. Even if yesterday her darkness had poked its now ugly head, even when it once seemed almost alluring and enticing, she’d found a way to send it somewhere else. She’d gone to sleep where everything was gone and had been blessed with not a single dream, just blank, plain, rejuvenating rest.

Killian was right though. What was a couple hours in comparison to pain on her skin every time she moved? What was a nap compared to having to heart-wrenchingly betray and hurt herself like so many others had in her life?

Though she’d wanted to, she didn’t. And that was that.

She didn’t validate their feelings and thoughts about her worth, about her character, strengths, and shortcomings. She didn’t give them—the parents, the kids, the people who put her down in so many ways—the power because she was trying to make things right by her, and it started with giving herself the chance to heal. Whether she found a way to stay clean from then on out wasn’t her concern; it was staying true and hopeful and to remember that she deserved the treatment she thought Elsa, David, and Killian did. They deserved kindness and happiness, to not be beaten down by anyone’s hand or words, including their own. They deserved it and so did she.

She was going to try to love herself, as vague and foreign as the concept now seemed, and the first solid step she could think of was by giving herself the same treatment she would give someone she loved; someone like Killian. And she knew she must’ve loved herself deep down or else she never would have made the friends she had—she never would’ve let Killian near her and into her life. She wouldn’t have opened up her heart to him if she hadn’t had some hope deep down that she deserved something better than what she knew and what she gave herself.

So here she was, another day clean—another hour, another minute, and another second stronger than she had been the day, minute, and second before. She didn’t know what would happen this time around if she relapsed. She’d relapsed when everything went to hell the weeks before her realization with Killian at the drop-off that she needed help. Everything was going so well. She had been clean and then, like that, she wasn’t.

‘Progress isn’t perfection,’ as they say. But if it did happen again—if she found out she wasn’t perfect and harmed herself again, at least she could try to go after ‘progress’ instead; at least she could give herself the chance to try again. And, she’d decided late the night before that she’d rather spend the rest of her life trying and fighting for those days, minutes, and seconds harm-free.

Today was another test, this moment was another challenge, and waiting in the medical room a nurse had led her to was her latest battle—and even if a battle or two or, hell, ten might be lost, she was going to win this war. She was going to laugh again with her friends, she was going to enjoy the holidays at David’s family’s house again, and she was going to get out of there, self-harm free and enrolled in the Out-patient program at the hospital with a therapist and a psychiatrist to tweak and fine tune her medications until she had a great balance like Killian’s.

She was going to go back and snark at Victor and Kristoff with Dorothy and challenge Elsa to art challenges where she didn’t have to draw a thing but instead shout out different images—‘bird in a cage,’ ‘sunset over the mountains,’ ‘a moon over water’—while Elsa created mini-masterpieces in less than fifteen seconds. She was going to get back to MHA and make ribbons and hot glue Killian’s fingers by accident because she always did and he was a big baby about it now that they knew each other; and she’d tell him to stop whining while he’d protest, “Excuse you, I do not whine, Miss I-hate-mornings-and-will-tell-the-whole-world-until-I-get-coffee.” And she was going to do the night march for Mental Health Awareness, and she was going to have Killian next to her while they followed their friends out of the dark morning and into the bright sunrise of day. And then she was going to ask Killian out on a real goddamn date because she loved herself enough to get out of the hospital on good, observable progress with outside resources to help her keep going, and because she loved herself enough to give them the chance.

But for all of this to happen, she needed to make it passed this next hurdle.

She had to show a whole new physician what her skin looked like. She had to take whatever feedback they gave, evaluate it clear-mindedly, and toss out the negative like foul garbage. As Emma undressed and lay her clothes in a neater and more careful pile this time on the chair, she found herself with a thrilling sense of bravery because she knew that no matter who looked at her, no matter what someone else could possibly say, she had friends who knew what she’d done and still cared about her. She had Elsa and Killian who had actually seen her darkest self and David and Mary Margaret who were supportive all the same. Hours after the friendly encounter with the new physician, she was alive, survived, and well. She was also sitting in front of David and Mary Margaret during her visiting lunch hour.

“Thank you for adding me to your list, Emma,” smiled Mary Margaret.

“Thank  _you_  for bringing me home baked goods and lasagna,” said Emma between alternating bites of sugary glaze and cheesy pasta sheets.

“Dessert and tomato sauce—really, Ems? That’s kind of gross,” remarked David with a scrunched nose.

“Don’t ask me to choose between the two. My taste buds are perfectly capable of telling the difference, you simple man.”

“Well, I’ll tell mom that you ended up swallowing all the scones faster than usual,” he said.

“I bet she’ll be happy to hear it. I am her favorite eater, after all. And, Mary Margaret, it goes without saying that your lasagna is amazing, so thank you and thank you guys for keeping me company while Killian is busy.” She knew very well that Killian ‘busy’ meant ‘ _Fine_ , I suppose I’ll give your brother his own visit with you.’

“MHA has been taking everyone’s spare moments,” said Mary Margaret, “and with this month being the big month, Anna’s been running around on fire trying to get all the weekend events organized and everything up and ready for the march.”

“How’s that all going, by the way? Killian doesn’t mention it a whole lot when I bring it up—I don’t think he wants me to worry or something.”

“The march is going to be big. We’re working with the next few towns over and everyone’s getting sponsorships organized,” said David.

“And different colored ribbons for days,” said Mary Margaret. “For every disorder, disability, and condition you can imagine. There are barrels full of them back in the meeting room. There’s hardly room to meet in there anymore with all the banners, tables, and chairs they’re bringing in. And, we still have tents coming in, too.”

“Wow… That’s great,” replied Emma, trying not to sound disappointed about missing out on all the planning. “Hopefully I can make it in time to actually do something helpful.”

Mary Margaret looked over at David who now had that worrying expression as he watched Emma intently trying to cut off another corner of lasagna with her plastic, safety-certified fork.

“You  _are_  doing something helpful. You’re being a model of pro-activeness. One day, you might feel different about your situation—you might want to share it more with people,” said Mary Margaret as she reached for David’s hand and smiled. “In all honesty, Emma, you look so well despite everything that’s happened so recently.”

“Please,” she snorted. “I’m a comfy but frumpy looking mess right now. Have you seen my hair?” she joked.

“Seriously, Emma,” David smiled, “you look rested. You’re standing and sitting up straighter than I’ve seen you in a while. Your head is up to the world. I don’t think you realize how much good work you’re doing in here.”

“There are people who aren’t open to change that quickly, you know… I was one of them, too,” confessed Mary Margaret. “Like Killian was, but in my own way.”

David and Killian had both hinted that Mary Margaret was familiar with treatment and therapies. It was part of the reason why Emma was okay with David bringing her today. And not to take for granted the love that David showed her by visiting today, there was just something nice about having at least one person in their conversation that had experienced some of the same things. It was especially comforting to know that Mary Margaret—hard-working, optimistic, driven, and capable Mary Margaret—could rise from a place like this and become someone who exuded self-confidence because she wasn’t afraid of a little hard work.

“I just miss everyone and I feel like I’m missing out,” said Emma glumly, “but you’re right, what I’m doing in here is pretty much the epitome of Mental Health Awareness month—being aware and, well, getting treatment for it. I just have to keep reminding myself that this is all worth it.”

“That you’re worth it,” added David.

“Yes, that I’m worth it,” she amended. “So,” she huffed out a breath and tried to clear the darkness beginning to cloud around her, “if I don’t bust out of here in the next two weeks, what am I missing event-wise?”

“There will be no busting out of anywhere, Emma Swan,” said David sternly.

“As long as I’m supplied with regular helpings of lasagna, I suppose I can be persuaded to stay a little longer.” And with that, her mood lightened—faster and more effectively than ever before, her humor brought her to a lighter place and being with friends whom she didn’t have to hide from made it all easier.

Their conversation came to a halt when David had to leave the unit to hunt down a bathroom for visitors, and Mary Margaret and Emma were left to have their first one-on-one conversation; no buffers to fill in the blank spaces, just them.

“So… How’s my brother doing with all of this?”

“Honestly, I think he has some practice from being around me all the time, but he’s still pretty new to everything. He asks a lot of questions about you—‘Are they feeding her right?’ came up a lot in the beginning.” Emma laughed. “But mostly, he just misses you. He wants you to take all the time you need, but don’t be surprised if he’s in a party mood when you’re discharged.”

“That’s nice, actually… I don’t like him worrying about me, but I’m glad he’s still being supportive about it all and not just putting up a front.”

“If the people in your life don’t step up when you’re going through something like this—if they’re making it harder for you when things are already hard enough—well then, tell me, who’s got the real problem?” said Mary Margaret with a certainty and strength that caught Emma off guard. “Friends, families, even a badly matched doctor and therapist, if they’re not being a part of the solution then maybe they don’t deserve to have important places in our lives.”

“That could be reserved for other people who do really want to help. Yeah, I get that,” said Emma. “David’s there for you, no doubt about that.”

“But he wouldn’t have been.”

“What do you mean?”

“David and I met on our study abroad. The same program I never would’ve went on if I had listened to all the negativity from my family. My step-mother wasn’t… helpful when I came out about my eating disorder and in some ways, I think she tried to control me by guilt-tripping me all the time.”

“She tried to manipulate you through your disorder? Who does that kind of shit?” asked Emma, simmering a little for Mary Margaret’s injustice.

“She would just tell me awful things about how I was trying to steal attention away from my dad. How I always had to be the center of everything then turn around a purposely comment on the way I looked. That my hair didn’t suit my ‘face shape,’ that my clothes didn’t suit my body… Hell, that my body didn’t suit anything. I had a problem long before she came into the picture, but she didn’t help and unfortunately, while the world has people just as sweet and supportive as David and Killian… it also has some bad ones that hurt us on purpose or just hurt us through ignorance, too.”

“I’m so sorry, Mary Margaret… I had no idea that you had to go through something like that. I didn’t think you would even have a disorder or anything. You’re so positive.”

“So is Killian and he’s been admitted, too. So is Elsa and she used to have panic attacks every day because her own thoughts were too triggering. And even Ruby, her dad’s Obsessive Compulsive Disorder made things very difficult for him while she was growing up, but he raised Ruby himself and managed things as best as he could, and now, he’s the happiest and most agreeable man I’ve ever met. Disorders, illnesses—they happen to everyone. We all have our challenges.”

“I’m still new to this. I don’t know how I’m going to make it out of this sometimes, but other times, I’m so sure that I’ll be okay. It’s frustrating.” 

“I just want you to know that I’ve been in this place and I made it out,” she smiled, “and those voices in my head that told me I was less than a person, the ones that sounded like my step-mother and told me I was nothing, they don’t sound as loud anymore. Actually, most of the time, I don’t hear them. I don’t give them the time of day when I do start to either.”

“I can’t wait for that day. I can’t wait to not hate myself for the things I’ve done. I just don’t know when that day will come.”

“If you keep listening to those voices, if you give those people around us or in the past the room to spew out their negativity then you’re giving them power over you, and the only real way to fight all of that is with love. Ruby is my best friend and during our breaks, I go with her family because they’re all so full of acceptance. If I had found a way to make room for all my step-mother’s negativity, I figured I could make even more room for love then, too. Eventually I stopped replaying it over and over again and my step-mother’s voice faded away. Love for yourself and love for other people is highly underrated.”

“Killian always says hope is my strongest ally in this whole ordeal.”

“Hope was important to me because without it, I never would’ve escaped my old life. I never would’ve looked forward to things that could change my life. Hope opened me up to love and the possibility of loving my body again. I have love for people I’ve never met in real life and even new people who come to my body dysmorphic disorder groups because they’re all going through something I had to fight. And, you’ve got a lot of love in you, too. I see it when your brother is around—I especially see it when you’re with Killian. I have no doubt that when you find a way to heal from all of this, you’ll help others. You’ve got that savior quality about you, Emma. You’re so strong and I’m getting the feeling that you don’t know exactly how inspiring it is to be around you, what a leader you are. But keep hanging around Killian. Something tells me he won’t rest until you realize it.”

Emma felt a small smile tug at her lips. “I was thinking the same of you, y’know.  You’re the perfect student, you’re in a great relationship, you have internships and volunteering… I can’t even bring myself to wash my face every night so I don’t get acne the next day.”

“Self-care is hard when you’re depressed or panicked about everything.”

“Face washing is self-care now?” snorted Emma.

“It  _is_  taking care of yourself. It’s doing something now in hopes that it will pay off in the future, and when you don’t see a future for yourself, skipping another shower doesn’t seem to matter.”

“I do always forget how good I feel after a shower even though it’s more of a hassle for me to get changed back in the dorms.”

“May I ask how they are?” said Mary Margaret.

She meant the scars. How were the wounds and scars doing? And at first, Emma didn’t know what to say to that, but then she rubbed her covered forearm and relished how the sensation didn’t hurt, how it comforted instead.

“These ones are healed up,” she said. “It’s just all light scabbing on my arms from scratches. I—I wasn’t used to doing it there and I guess I got scared about doing anything too, well, you know… I don’t think they’re going away any time soon, but right now, my goal is just not to add any more.”

“Trust me when I say that I understand that because for me, each day is another goal to meet and some days it feels harder than others, but as long as I’m trying to climb back up and not just let myself fall, I guess that’s progress,” spoke Mary Margaret, eyes downcast and fidgeting with her bracelet.

Emma took the moment to truly look at Mary Margaret and realized that without intending to, Emma had just made another friend—one that didn’t just bring her lasagna, but one that wanted to understand where Emma was coming from, what she was going through, because it was so similar to her own experiences even as different as the diagnoses were.

In that moment, Emma felt the true power of a stranger turning friend and hope turning into possibility just from sharing stories.

* * *

 

 

Killian was fifteen minutes late when he arrived at the lobby outside the unit. He signed in quickly, a messy signature he didn’t give one care about, and entered the unit, immediately scanning for blonde hair.

Emma was sitting on the couch with Merida, Mulan, and some other patients, all rejoicing over one of the nurses actually letting them use the main room’s TV on the wall. It had been ‘broken’ for the longest time, but for Emma, that was just code for ‘needs to be hit a couple of times.’ Funny enough, some connector—gadget-and-gizmo something or other—cable must’ve been out of place because the slap on the side actually worked and a commercial for a new children’s movie played on the screen.

“You did it!” cheered Merida.

“Amazing, we can watch something other than the news,” said Mulan with a dramatic, relieved sigh. The news was  _always_  playing in the TV room by the other patients. Nothing else seemed to be allowed and the remote was always dominated by an old woman who wasn’t particularly concerned about being obliging.

“They have movies, what should we watch?” asked Merida.

“Anything with crude humor and explosions usually entices Emma,” said Killian from behind the group.

“That’s my girl,” praised Merida, holding out her hand for Emma to slap it. She did then instantly got up and moved passed the others to Killian.

She hugged him with the largest grin on her face—a mixture of winning the TV, seeing David, having a long talk with Mary Margaret, good food, and, of course, seeing Killian’s absurdly handsome face.

“Thought you forgot about me,” she said, walking with him outside.

“You know very well that wouldn’t happen.”

“Missed you today.”

“You just missed my devilishly good looks, but now you have TV so I suppose you don’t need me to look at me anymore.”

“Aw, don’t sell yourself short, babe—I use you for smuggling me in candy, too,” she teased and started patting down his pockets for her latest request; one of those sugary cherry lollipops from the drugstore near campus. “Well, today was actually kind of fun.”

She was tearing apart the wrapping while he heard her ‘babe’ echo throughout his heart.

“I totally see why David is all heart-eyes for Mary Margaret; they’re too perfect for each other. I got to talk to her by ourselves for a minute and she really helped me out. I mean, she said a lot of the things you say, too, but it was interesting hearing it come from someone with a different type of disorder than the things we share.” She popped it into her mouth and contemplated her next words.

“She’s been through a lot, I know, from what Dave has told me.”

“You and my brother are besties?” she smiled. “I know what you mean now. About making it through this and being there for someone else. I don’t think I’d feel this hopeful if it weren’t for you and her being so open with me. It’s almost contagious, this positivity thing,” she chuckled.

“Hope is catching. That’s why my depression always attacks that first when it comes back around.”

Emma swung her leg over the other side of the bench and faced him, swiveling her lollipop to the side of her mouth to speak.

“How often does your depression come back?”

“Not very often and not for very long anymore either,” he answered.

“And the other thing… Sorry, I can’t remember what it’s called,” she apologized.

“No worries.  _Mania,_  and depression is it’s opposite of sorts.”

“Ah, that’s right. Manic-Depression. That’s what it used to be called, right? Why’d they switch it?”

“People thought it to be a little too antiquated, but Bipolar is pretty self-explanatory, too, once you know what the two polars are. I don’t know exactly why they changed it, but it is a little more vague, so discretion, maybe? Things just change, for the better, I like to think. Like, DID, Dissociative Identity Disorder, was called Multiple Personality Disorder, but that wasn’t accurate at all.”

 “And when did things get ‘normal’ for you? When you started therapy?”

“It wasn’t while I was in the hospital, I can tell you that much. The medications they gave me after I left weren’t necessarily bad. There were some side-effects I wasn’t happy with, but they were mostly just not that effective.”

“And when did you start taking the stuff you’re on now?”

“My new psychiatrist, well not  _new_ , but latest, started me on this medication two years ago, but before that I felt like I was barely getting by—not self-harming, not getting into fights, just… trying to be better, but I felt like I had so much stacked against me. Then I swapped one little pill for this newer stuff and, I don’t know, all the bad didn’t seem insurmountable anymore.”

“Huh, your medication changed that much?”

“It gave me more options than ‘wallow in despair’ and ‘get by.’ I guess I just felt more like myself—how I’m truly supposed to be; not addled by anxiety and irrational depression.”

“Do you think mine will do that, too?”

“Only if you do the therapy and groups, too. It doesn’t work if you don’t have the coping techniques to guide you through while your brain ‘re-hardwires’ itself, remember? Medication is powerful and the right one might be the dosage of Prozac they’re trying to get you up to or something else completely. It’s trial and error, this whole thing, unfortunately.”

“Well… what if I end up getting some guy who thinks I should be on something else?”

“If  _you_  feel like you should be taking something else, that’s all that matters. If your psychiatrist doesn’t agree to test something new out, to try something you haven’t tried yet then sack ‘em. Not worth the effort when there are so many others out there willing to listen to you.”

“Damn… This stuff is kind of overwhelming.”

“Maybe you won’t feel that way in a few days. You’re still working up to a therapeutic dose and I think it’s already working for you. You look amazing, Emma.”

“You guys are too nice. Like I told David and Mary Margaret, I’m a mess in here. I mean, my hair for one.”

“Your hair is always stunning, but that’s not what we mean. I came in late and you were fine. Imagine your first couple days here if I hadn’t shown up. Do you think you’d be laughing and smiling with the other people here while you waited?”

“I knew you’d come eventually.”

“But when we’re depressed and lonely and distressed, a break in schedule like that, a crack in routine would send us haywire. We’d assume the worst about the situation or them or ourselves. Our anxiety and despair would sky rocket. But you weren’t like that when I came in. You were confident and taking charge, trying to listen to everyone’s suggestions at one time. Emma,” he grinned, “you’re getting better.”

“Who would’ve thought that all this time—” She paused, staring off into the distance with a serious look in her eye.

“Yes…?” asked Killian.

“That after all this work… That after all the talks and therapies and medication, the thing that would really get me noticed as a functioning, hope filled person—”

“Uh-huh…?”

“Someone who was better…”

“Your dramatic pauses are getting worrisome now, Emma.”

“…Was just getting the TV to work.”

“Bloody hell,” he rolled his eyes, smiling all the same.

“Killian, I think two more fixed TVs and I might be able to leave the hospital.”

“Glad to see your sense of humor has returned full force.”

“I’m perfectly serious, here,” she tried to say with a straight face, failing.

“Yes, I’m sure you are,” he laughed and snatched her lollipop out of her hand. “No more sugar.”

“Hey!” she whined, trying to take it back, but he held it out of her reach. “Come on! They don’t give us caffeine, everything is low-sugar. Don’t take this away from me, too.” She gave him a sad pout and let her shoulder slump in defeat, and Killian was helpless to it. He held it out to her and she took it, instantly perking up.

She looked at him then narrowed her eyes, pressed her lips to the sloppy hard candy and planted a sugary kiss to Killian’s cheek.

“Did you just leave a bunch of sticky sugar on my face?” he groaned, playfully pushing her away.

“If it helps, it’s cherry flavored.”

“Wow, thanks, Swan,” he said dryly. “I can’t even wipe it off.”

“Sucks for you,” she sang.

In a more flirtatious tone, he offered, “If you ever want to try that again without all the sticky candy, by all means, don’t stand on ceremony.”

“You’re such a flirt,” she said, twirling the lollipop stick.

“Only with you, love.”

She smirked, he grinned, and without hesitation, she popped the sticky wet candy out of her mouth and tried to press it against his cheek again.

“ _Emma!”_  whined Killian. “Not sanitary.”

“Eh, I’m done with it anyway. Here, want some?” she laughed, waving it near his face.

After forty-five minutes of joking around—Emma running into her room for a wet paper towel to clean up Killian’s cherry stained cheek—they walked to the double doors and were saying their goodbyes when Dr. Talbot walked out of one of the meeting rooms.

“Oh, Emma,” she said with that same drawl, “and Killian. Great that you’re visiting.”

“Always, doctor,” agreed Killian.

“So, I’ll be in after the weekend to meet with you, Emma.”

“Um, I was just wondering how long until I start taking the full dose of my medication?”

“Tomorrow, in the morning. I was just checking in about that. But, we’ll meet on Monday. I think it’s time to discuss your plans for when you’re discharged. According to the staff, it may be well within the next two weeks. But we’ll see how it goes, yes?”

“Cool. Yeah, thanks.”

With a polite, professional smile, Dr. Talbot continued on her way to the main desk, leaving Emma and Killian alone once more.

“Hear that, Swan? Give it a few days and your medication will really start working.”

“Did you hear that? Two weeks, Killian! Less than two weeks! I might be out of here in time for the club events. This is so awesome.”

“Told you, Swan. Everyone can see it. You’re getting better.”

“Thank you,” she smiled.

“This is all you, Emma.” He hugged her close and pecked her on the cheek before turning and leaving through the doors.

“Hey!” she shouted after him.

“Fair’s fair, love. Just be glad yours wasn’t sticky.”

And with that, Emma returned to Merida and Mulan. They watched two movies and convinced the graveyard staff to let the three of them stay up until midnight watching their new TV. Merida teased her about Killian’s very friendly encounter and then she went to bed.

Blissfully hopeful.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you have a wonderful Sunday everyone


	14. Out of the Darkness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay okay okay---so 4 Non Blondes' 'What's Up?' just gets me, so of course I had to incorporate it into my mental health playlist. Also, I don't play Sims 4 often, but when I do, you bet I live out my best and most self-indulgent life. That being said, there are references to both and please don't hold me being a huge dork against me! Thank you guys for being so patient. I just started out an a new university (transferred in) and it's been a difficult adjustment. A very, extremely, horribly difficult adjustment. (I'm not good at transitioning.) Plus, I'm Bipolar and the seasonal change in light is messing me up big time, been fighting off a depressive episode for the last month. I saved up enough for a SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) lamp though! The lighting where I live sucks and doesn't help. 
> 
> ANYWAY TANGENTS YAY! I think you guys will be happy with this chapter. Our slow burn is finally getting somewhere and please please please excuse any typos. I was so excited that I finally wrote something today that I just wanted to post it up! Love you guys!

This was it.

The meeting that would decide if she was recovered enough to leave the hospital.

After a weekend of Killian trying to calm her nervousness, smiling at her excitement, soothing her eagerness by holding her fidgeting hands—it all came down to this; sitting in a tiny meeting room with Dr. Talbot who was silently looking over some paper in her sleek, coldly professional, black leather folder.

Emma bounced her leg up and down, but then she stopped, not wanting to look anything but patient, stable, and ready to leave.

“So, Emma. How do you feel today?”

“Good—no, great! I think the medication is working.”

“I see you’ve almost finished your book.” Dr. Talbot pointed her pen at the bookmark lodged into the back few pages of the memoir.

“Yeah, it’s… I don’t know, I guess easier to read fast again.”

“Would you say your concentration is better?”

“Definitely. I can read for longer and it just clicks. Everything I’m reading makes sense. Like I can make connections.”

“That’s good, very good.” She stopped talking and scribbled illegibly onto the notepad attached to the flap of her folder before turning back to Emma who now felt more confident.

She was okay, she was going to get out of there, no problem. All the progress she was making, she could function in school if she put her mind to it—she’d be able to do all her assigned reading and actually respond to it. Papers, reflections, journals—she felt like she could tackle it. Her progress couldn’t lie.

“And do you still feel like hurting yourself?”

Shit. Her progress didn’t lie—she _was_ better, but her itch to feel that distracting, terrible pain... Dr. Talbot would see right through that lie, so she didn’t.

“Well,” Emma cleared her throat, “I, uh… I still think about it. I haven’t felt like I needed to, but… Yeah, I guess I still think about it.”

“And what do you think about?”

“My scars are a constant reminder of a past I’m trying to forget so I can move on from it. But they’re still there and they’ll probably be there for a while. And so I wonder if I’ve really changed. If I won’t be that person anymore.”

“Do you think you’re still that person?”

“I guess not.”

“And why is that?”

“Because…” How was she any different? How many times had she stopped fixating on that question while in the hospital? How she distracted herself by seeking out Merida and Mulan. How she grabbed onto her book or took up a chair at the wall of phones to call Killian whose number she’d learned to know by heart. “I don’t like doing it,” she answered. “I never did, not really. And when I think about doing it, it drives me crazy and I feel sick, so I do things to stop that feeling. Good things. I read. Or watch TV. Draw or color. Sometimes I talk to my friends.”

“Do you talk to them about the thought of self-harming?”

“I talk to Killian sometimes, but most of the time, I don’t want to think about it. I don’t know, I guess I just try to move on from it. I’m trying to be better.” The last part was practically a plea because she _was_.

“I see,” was all Dr. Talbot replied, and in that moment, Emma could feel her stomach sinking down into a nauseous mess. She blew it. She should’ve lied, she thought, but then realized that if she did then she would never know if she was truly strong enough to leave; if she was ‘recovered’ enough to leave. After a moment of writing, Dr. Talbot continued.

“And how would you describe your mood this weekend? Improved? Consistent or worse?”

“Improved, for sure,” she said eagerly, trying to fix the broken image she’d just painted of herself. “I mean, I’m excited about what you said. About maybe leaving in the next two weeks?”

Dr. Talbot wrote, stopped, looked up, and paused.

Again, Emma’s stomach immediately sank.

“Truth be told, Emma,” the doctor began, “I think we can get you out of here by Thursday.”

What. Her eyes went wide.

“You’re making good progress,” said Dr. Talbot with a smile. “Your focus is back, your performance in our occupational therapy program notes your energy. Your activity level is up. You’re socializing, not isolating. The nurses have noticed your increased stability and willingness to come to them when you’re feeling anxious or ‘off’. And you’re coping with your urge to self-harm fantastically. You’ve made quick progress, but mostly, I see you’re determined and _trying_. And that makes the difference.”

She tucked her pen into the sleeve and closed her folder, closing the reports from the nurses and her notes on Emma’s past behavior. Emma was still speechless.

“When you first came here, you were showing depressive symptoms. Low energy, low mood. You were trying enough to admit yourself which we definitely took into account, but you weren’t ready to be out of our care. Now, I feel you are. I feel you have recovered the tools to keep yourself on your track to recovery. You have support systems in place with your friends and we’ll make sure you have more with a psychiatrist to continue your medication and a therapist for counseling. Overall, I’m very hopeful Emma, and you should be, too.”

She was in a daze—through their goodbyes, through her walk back to the common room, to her wordless return to the couches in front of the TV where Merida and Mulan sat watching a movie. Even the movie was a daze. She only snapped out of it when she saw Killian and attacked him with a hug.

“I’m happy to see you, too,” he laughed, wrapping her in his arms right back.

She was positively beaming when she leaned back to look at him, to watch his reaction to her news.

“Thursday.”

“What?”

“I get out Thursday.”

“Thursday,” he grinned, “this Thursday?”

“Yeah. I’m coming back, Killian.” He picked her up and twirled her around, their enthusiasm hidden in the shadows on the balcony.

“I knew you could bloody do it!”

“That’s nice. I didn’t though,” she laughed.

“Well, I knew all along. So did David and Mary Margaret. Elsa always knew, too. You always had it in you, Swan.”

“I want to ask you something.”

“Anything, love.”

She wanted to ask him a lot of things, one of them being a date, but… “Will you be my walking buddy for the march?”

“I’d love that.” She leaned back in and hugged him again, and in the days following, she ended up hugging a lot of people. Even Jim gave her a quick one armed hug, called her ‘kiddo’, and walked back to his card game. Merida and Mulan both tackled her. Theirs lasted the longest.

“When you get out of here, send me a friend request,” said Merida with a teasing but stern tone that she adopted from her mother for special occasions.

“Yes, me, too,” said Mulan, hugging the both of them even tighter.

“We’re far away, but my family has a killer cabin if you ever want to bring your friends and boyfriend up for a stay,” smiled Merida.

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

Merida smiled for old time’s sake, stealing a glance at Killian who was talking politely with Dr. Talbot while Emma said goodbye, but then Emma shrugged and said casually, “At this moment.”

“That a girl,” laughed Merida.

“Don’t let school get you down. Take a break for the summer, keep yourself busy with work—but not too busy! And go back part-time to your classes if you don’t feel up for it. Oh, and don’t stay up late all the time. No all-nighters, we’re getting too old for that kind of thing and it messes up our sleep schedules and that affects moods. And exercise! Don’t—”

Merida cut Mulan off, “Okay, Mum, save the lecture. She knows what’s good for her. That’s why she’s already out of here. We’ll see you on the other side, lassie.”

“Thanks, guys. Send me a ‘hey’ as soon as you two get out.”

“We’ll accept those friend requests as soon as our phone privileges are restored.”

“Go help plan that march with your friends now,” Mulan finally said.

“Definitely. Bye, guys,” she smiled. Killian had her bag already, recently retrieved from the locked compartment in her room because ropes and strings were no longer a hazard. She was re-entering a world with knobs and hooks on doors, shiny silver utensils, and laces on sneakers and in hoodies.

Killian reached for her hand and the two of them gave their goodbyes to Dr. Talbot, waved on last time to Merida and Mulan, and walked across that line—once an invisible wall keeping her locked in, but now welcoming her to leave.

Then there was her dorm room.

She didn’t want Killian to see it again, remembering the mess she’d left it in. The small copper colored smears on the white bed sheets that lay draped over her windows or her haphazardly open drawers, including the one that held her destructive tools. _She_ didn’t even want to go in there, to the dim light of her lamp and the stale air of a room locked up with so much sorrow for weeks.

But then Killian fished her keys from his pocket, trusted to both him and Elsa who had needed it at one point to retrieve the book of modern artists she’d leant Emma for their art class. He unlocked it, but paused with his hand on the knob, turning to her with a sheepish, uncertain look.

“I know she didn’t ask, but just know she was only trying to be helpful.”

“What do you mean?”

“When Elsa borrowed your key, she said she, ‘just straightened up the room a little.’”

He opened it slowly and ‘a little’ made a huge difference. Her window was propped open enough for a breeze. It made the room chilly, but it smelled like fabric softener sheets that she always skipped buying because which college student had luxury for all that? Clean clothes were clean clothes, but the soft smell of clean linen lingered around her bed which was made up nicely with clean and neat angles and corners, fluffed pillows layered against the headboard.

Her stacks of books were scooted to the sides in straight towers and all her clothes, once tossed and kicked around the ground in the slow crawl of her depression were put in her hamper. Her desk was neat, her school bag was lying in her desk chair, her drawers were closed, and as much as she wanted to feel horrible about the trouble Elsa had gone to or the embarrassment of the initial state of her room, she felt relieved and thankful. It was a new start with the help of another once more, and instead of inflicting guilt on herself, she felt gratitude and love. She owed Elsa a trip to her favorite ice cream spot and more, for sure.

Killian placed her bag by her dresser and Emma fell back with her arms spread wide on top of the bed. She closed her eyes, her fair hair fanned out around her, and let out a deep sigh of appreciation. The room looked so good, smelled so good, felt clear and breezy and cold. Killian chuckled and moved her backpack to sit on her desk chair.

“So, I take it you’re not mad at her?”

“Not at all,” she said with closed eyes. “I’m just thinking of how much I owe her for this. This is nice.”

“You know she won’t want anything in return.”

“I’d like to see her try to say no to a pint of her favorite ice cream,” she smiled, peeking open one eye at Killian.

“You look and sound so much better than the last time we were in here, love.”

“I feel better. I still have a lot to get done, but right now, I don’t care about anything but how much I missed my own bed.”

“Well, I don’t want to push you, but we are having a meeting tonight. I don’t mind skipping to hang out though. It’s just errands and preparation.”

“No, I want to go,” she protested.

“…You know someone will ask you where you’ve been. Have you decided what you wanted to say?”

Well, she _was_ sick, so that wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t the whole truth either, but she’d never had trouble keeping her life private from people before.

“Honestly, I’ll probably tell Ana, Kristoff, and Victor I was sick. Ruby and Dorothy though, I don’t mind telling them. It might be nice for Mary Margaret to be able to talk to someone other than David about all this if she wants to. I know her and Ruby are close.”

“Whatever you feel is right. And I’ll reinforce it with Ana and them, too.”

“Thank you,” she smiled. “But honestly, I just want a burger right now.”

“Onion rings?”

“You know it.”

“Want to drive?”

“Yes!” she said enthusiastically and jumped to her feet. “I miss my baby.”

“To the death trap then,” he teased and tossed her keys towards her.

She rolled her eyes and they navigated the building and parking lot in search for her little yellow bug, and when she found it, she cried out, “Oh, baby! I missed you.”

“When will I get that kind of greeting?” asked Killian.

“Don’t be jealous. I love you, too,” she humored him.

“I love you, too,” he said as matter of fact as saying the sky was blue, but nonchalant like it wasn’t anything new. He left her to process it, getting into the car without waiting for her response. She gave a small smile, her ears burning, and hopped into the driver’s seat, not questioning him and instead asking him which burger joint to go to.

* * *

 

“Emma!” grinned Elsa.

Ana’s eyes widened. “Emma’s back!”

And it began.

_‘I was sick.’ ‘Just not feeling well.’ ‘I know, but you guys still got a lot done without me!’_

But without much resistance, it ended and life at MHA continued. When Dorothy and Ruby caught her alone and asked how her finals were going, Emma told them the truth. That she had dropped this semester and was hopefully going to get it wiped from her record so that she could retake the semester in the fall.

When they asked what had happened, she replied, “I was getting kind of depressed and my grades sucked because of it, but I went to the hospital and they sorted me out. I’m good now, I hope.”

“Well, you look way better now,” said Dorothy.

“Better than I’ve seen you all semester,” smiled Ruby.

“How was the hospital?”

“An experience,” laughed Emma  nervously, “but I made a couple friends and mostly just relaxed.”

Ruby lowered her voice a little and said, “You know, when my dad went to the hospital when I was little, he came back way better, and he still talks to his buddy he met there to this day. Not all the time, but they’re still close. You can’t help but make real bonds with people in there. I mean, it’s all so personal. I’m really happy for you, Emma. This is so awesome.”

“And don’t worry, Ruby and I won’t say anything without your permission.”

“Thanks, guys.”

“Thanks for telling us. That’s big and I’m glad you trusted us with it. So, are you going to wear something other than the ‘ally’ ribbon on the march?”

“I don’t know,” said Emma, “I don’t know if I’m ready for that.”

“Emma! I need your arms!” called Ana from the line of boxed helium tanks across the room.

“Balloons?” she said when she made it over and reached into the box, pulling out one of the heavy metal tanks.

“Balloon arch for the finish line,” said Ana happily. “Oh, it’s going to be so great. I picked bright colors and some clear ones because I hope the sunrise lights them all up—‘Out of the darkness’ is what they call these marches. I want people to see it glow when they finally get out of it, you know?”

Emma removed the rest of the tanks from the boxes and finished right on time to practically run over Victor on her way to Kristoff and the pink donut box he held in his hands.

“Emma! You’re here!” chimed Kristoff. “I wish I’d known, I’d have gotten you a bear claw.”

“No worries, I’ll take anything glazed.”

“Hey, Emma!” greeted Victor. “I heard you were sick, but you look better now.”

“I slept it off.”

“It shows,” he complimented. “You look well rested. Practically glowing.”

“Thanks, Victor,” she said, surprised by how upbeat he was being. Ana called him away next and Emma turned to Kristoff.

“What did I miss? Is he in love or something?”

“No, better, he got his internship at the hospital.”

“Ah, should’ve known.”

“You know he’s all about his work. Anyway, you wanted one of these, right?”

“Yes, sir!” she grinned.

She missed it all. Her friends, their tasks, the planning and brainstorming, but everything came together over the weekend. She met with the psychiatrist Dr. Talbot had recommended to her and the woman was comfortable and understanding. Emma was particularly won over when she had said, “Self-harming is like an addiction and it’s going take some time to kick the addiction completely, so don’t worry, Emma.”

Then she sent in her petition with the help of her school counselor, Dolores, and her dismal grades were being omitted from her record of that semester, and she was free to stay in her housing accommodations until the school year was up in a month which meant she didn’t have to worry about rent while she looked for another job.

And then life threw her a bone—or at least Ruby did.

“Killian told me you aren’t working at your old restaurant anymore.”

“Yeah, that place was horrible and my boss was a dick.”

“Well, I can’t guarantee that Granny won’t be a dick either because honestly, she’s a tough love kind of woman, but she’s definitely fair and understanding. We need a part-time waitress for the mornings and since you’re not doing classes this month—”

“I’ll take it!” Emma nearly shouted.

“Whoa there,” Ruby laughed. “Don’t be that excited, it doesn’t pay _that_ much. But I’ll let Granny know. And you’ll get to work with me, so that’s bonus enough.”

Everything was falling into place, everything was working out, and Emma couldn’t have felt better.

Then it all halted in a crash. A literal crash.

It wasn’t major, just a broken tail light and a dent in the rear fender, but she was at fault and she couldn’t believe it was happening to her right now. She _just_ got out of a mental hospital.

“I’m so, so sorry!” she said to the woman who gruffly replied, “Do your breaks not work?!”

“They work… I just wasn’t watching close enough—”

“Then watch where you’re going next time. Jesus, fucking kids.” She slammed Emma’s driver’s license onto the hood of her little yellow beetle before taking off, leaving them both with pictures of each other’s information and a damper on what was supposed to be another good day.

Killian was in class, he had his last midterm before his optional final in a couple of weeks, so she couldn’t call him. He really didn’t want to have to take that final and she couldn’t ruin it for him just because she ruined it for herself. The same for everyone else, too. She didn’t want to get them in any trouble just because she was in trouble—just because _she_ was trouble.

She hopped back in her car, luckily unscathed and solid as ever, and started to drive, wiping her eyes every couple of seconds so her vision would blur from the tears that kept falling and she didn’t get into another accident that would be all her fault.

She drove and drove until she was back at the drop-off and pushed open her door with excessive force, slamming it, and walking over to one of the slabs. This time, she could see the blue ocean stretched to the horizon, the waves below syncing with the sound of their crashing and rolling. The sun shone bright in the sky, but once again, she felt despair. She was officially out of the protective bubble of the hospital and disillusioned by the ideal, easy life where nothing went wrong in the last week.

She thought about the woman and how angry and unforgiving she was, her harsh words and even harsher tone. She thought of her insurance and all the trouble she was about to get in. She was freaking out and all of a sudden, she felt claustrophobic in her own skin.

Then she had the thought.

What if she scratched a little line? She could maybe pull it off with something in her bag. It was possible.

And right as she was zoning out, she heard a ‘ding’ from her phone.

‘Mulan Fa has accepted your Friend Request’

She got out.

Emma took in a deep breath and opened up the app, typing, “What’s your first stop now that you’re out of there? :)” and sent it. The momentary break from her darker mindset allowing her to breathe.

Then she locked her phone and set it down next to her. Only two weeks and she was in this debate again.

Already two weeks and she hadn’t done it. And she didn’t want to have to tell Mulan that she had hurt herself when the girl inevitably asked how she was doing. Mulan was freshly out, she still felt that encouragement and optimism of leaving, and if something happened to her, Emma would want to be able to soothe her and say, ‘Hey, it’s going to be okay because we’re okay. They told us we were ready to tackle the world again and we are doing it the best we can.’

And then she saw it. She saw herself responding to Mulan and smiling. She imagined herself getting into her car and going home, maybe playing a video game—making a character of that woman and having her own character antagonize her using the “Mean” behavior options she never indulged with others in that game. She envisioned herself calming down enough to call her insurance and give them all the information she collected, tell them what happened, and hang up never to speak to them again (hopefully).

And she wondered whether Killian would be ready for a night of partying after his horrid and last Statistics test was over. And all of a sudden, she knew she wouldn’t want to have to tell him or Elsa, Ruby or Dorothy, David or Mary Margaret that she had relapsed. She didn’t want to go out and have a fun time with Killian thinking about and feeling a new line on her skin.

After a moment, she decided—fuck that woman for being so mean. If Emma had been hit, yeah she would’ve been annoyed, but there’s no way she would’ve treated someone else the way that woman had treated her—let alone a ‘kiddo’ (as Jim always called them) as young as her.

“Bitch,” she huffed out. And yeah, it was her fault, but it felt good to say it. “Fuck it,” she said a little louder. “Fuck that!” she screamed out on the cliff. And then she just let out a yell and held it until she felt lightheaded and ready to go back home and carry out her imaginings.

She went back to her car and turned on the ignition, finally happy and a little smug that her car was completely unharmed; that her ‘death trap’ hadn’t let her down once again.

Before she put it in reverse, her phone went off again.

 _‘A real coffee with actual caffeine and chocolate’_ Mulan had replied.

* * *

 

The virtual woman that looked uncannily like the woman she’d rear-ended had just left their ‘conversation’ in a huff, and Emma felt a little better after that; especially after she’d gotten off the phone with the insurance company who assured her, _‘I’m so sorry about this, but you’re all set and we’ll take it from here. Thank you so much again for being a customer—’_

And also when Killian came knocking on her door. She was now ecstatic to tell him her news.

“I think it went horribly,” he said in a contradictory upbeat voice.

“I got into an accident and wanted to hurt myself, but didn’t,” she matched him.

His eyes widened and he immediately hugged her. “I’m _SO_ proud of you, Emma.” She gave a tired smile and rested her head on his shoulder, letting him envelope her and all her remaining angst. “Despite this test, I’m sure I’m passing with at least a C-, so I say you and I should have enough cause to celebrate, what do you say?”

“I say let’s round up the gang.”

Their outing ended up turning into one giant conversation about the march happening  in just two days followed by some shots bought by Mary Margaret and some dancing initiated by Ruby.

Kristoff got dragged onto the dance floor with the girls and Killian and David managed to escape after a couple songs.

Emma was right, this is what she had really wanted—to dance and have fun with her friends without another secret eating at her. She laughed when Mary Margaret twirled her around and when Dorothy almost lost balance when she tried to do the same.

“She looks good,” said David, taking a sip of his beer.

Killian cradled his, watching Emma have a good time underneath the strobing lights.

“I mean, she just looks lighter,” he continued.

“She was always strong, but I feel like she’s even more so now.”

“Do you worry she’ll go back to it? To the self-harming?”

“I did. But, I realized today that I don’t think she will. I think she can do it. She’s determined.”

“But if she does? What do we do?”

“We’ll be there for her. Tell her it’s okay to fall sometimes, but that she’s just going to go longer and stronger the next time around.” David nodded, serious and deep in thought; too deep for being in a club like that. “She’ll be fine, mate. She went through her whole room and we got rid of everything that she used to do it with. Everything that reminded her of a place she didn’t want to be in anymore. She’s got this. Trust me, she’s not like I was. She can fight it better.”

“Okay. I trust you.”

* * *

 

It was 5:00AM when her phone rang. It was Ana, excitedly telling her to wake up and get ready because it took fifteen minutes to get there and that wasn’t including finding parking. Emma rolled onto her back then turned her head. She poked Killian’s shoulder until he stirred, hair all mussed up from sleep and features still soft and relaxed.

“Is it time?” he yawned.

“Yup. Get up, Sleeping Beauty.”

“I wonder how long you’ve been waiting to use that.”

“A while. Never thought it would happen though. This is the first time I’ve woken up before you.”

Killian’s phone rang. It was Ana, calling to tell him to get his lazy ass out of bed, too.

“Please,” he chuckled, “you’re only up because she decided to call you first.” He answered Ana’s call and ended it with a, “Yes, ma’am.”

“You know, I wouldn’t have fallen back asleep. I’m excited, too. I would’ve gotten up.”

“Maybe I just like you sleeping over. You’re warm.”

“Get a better blanket,” she teased.

He dragged himself out of bed and away from Emma and simply replied, “Nope,” before gathering his things and leaving for the bathroom down the hall. Emma took a couple extra minutes lying down and then rolled out of bed and away from the blankets, sheets, and pillows (he’d gotten an extra fluffy one for her) that all smelled like him.

They stopped by the MHA meeting room to grab coffees courtesy of Kristoff and Ana and to load up supplies into their vehicles. Emma had boxes of ribbons and forms stuffed into the back and front passenger seat of her bug while Killian piled back-up helium tanks and a box of pamphlets and banners outside of his own car.

She helped him then shoved her hands in her pockets and said, “So, I guess I’ll see you there.”

“I’ll be the handsome scoundrel with the flashlight.”

She smirked and went back to her car and drove off into the darkness.

* * *

 

The organizations Ana had teamed the MHA up with were taking care of the finish line, but Ana was relentless in getting everything set up on time at the starting line.

“That goes over there! Oh! And that goes by those things! AH! Be careful with those balloons, they’ll pop on the tree!”

Soon, people started filtering in. Greetings became louder and more frequent and more participants crowded around the barrels of ribbons with signs for each of their causes. Emma paused in front of them, staring at the sign for ‘Ally’. Killian came over to her, a bright green ribbon pinned to his jacket next to an orange ribbon. Green for depression and bipolar disorder. It was a color they shared.

“What’s the orange one for?” she asked.

“Self-harming.” Not the only one they shared apparently.

Emma remained serious and brought her eyes back to the ‘Ally’ ribbon barrel.

“You know, you don’t have to wear any if you don’t want to. No one has to know anything. That’s your business and it’s a privilege for people to know anything about you. If you don’t want to give them anything, that’s fine, darling.”

She nodded, but walked over to the barrel with green ribbons and plucked one out of it.

She asked, “Can you grab me an orange ribbon?” A corner of Killian’s lips lifted, but he tried not to make a big deal out of it just as she wasn’t trying to. She finished pinning her green ribbon for depression onto her jacket when he returned and stepped closer, handing her his flashlight, and pinning the orange ribbon aside her green one as well.

“Ready for this, Swan?”

“Of course. I busted out of the slammer for this,” she joked.

She took his hand and they lined up at the starting line, waiting for Ana’s signal. Someone was riding a bike with bright neon lights circling around the wheels as they rode, a boombox strapped onto the back of it playing bright and blood circulating music carefully chosen to exude positivity and represent musical artists with mental illness, too. Merida was still in the hospital, but Mulan was there with Aurora and Philip, the both of them placing a kiss on her cheeks at the same time. They, too, held hands at the starting line, but that’s what couples did. Emma tightened her fingers between Killian’s.

With a giant cheer, a mass of marchers started working their way down the lane of the park. Flashlights were waving, the bumping music was turned up louder, glow sticks were passed out, luminous bracelets glowing purple, blue, and pink were wrapped around wrists, and someone, they suspected Dorothy, snuck up behind them and swiftly placed glowing necklaces around Emma and Killian’s necks.

People sang with the music, recited altered adapted military tunes—‘Left, right, left!’—and whistled and howled like wolves in the darkness. Everyone was bouncing around, drifting from one group of people to the next. They were all alive in the night because the darkness is where most of them had found themselves living in at some point of their lives.

Then the sky began to change. Over the hour, the birds awoke in the park, chiming to the rising of the sun, and everyone’s chatter grew livelier. Soon, the light of the turning sky illuminated the road and outlines of the crowds of people adorning ribbons, and eventually, there was no need to grasp onto their flashlights to see the walkway anymore.

The path out of the darkness was becoming clear though it was still a trek away from the end. At one point, Emma and Killian merged with their group of students from their school and from their club. Their friends sang along to the next song on the boombox, _“And so I cry sometimes when I'm lying in bed just to get it all out—What's in my head, and I, I am feeling a little peculiar—”_ and the whole crowd cried out the chorus. She’d never felt so connected with so many people. They were all struggling, their battles were personal and unique, but at the same time, it all fell under that same struggle with themselves, with their illnesses, with their pasts, and with the sometimes daunting future.

She couldn’t remember the phases of the growing light of the sky between the black, star lit universe above to the sun peeking out from the east now. She only knew that there was darkness and then suddenly there was light, and she thought, ‘Maybe this is what Killian meant.’ That one day you just realize you’ve been existing in light instead of darkness, the stages of twilight a vague memory of recovery.

They could see the arch of balloons in sight and hear a band playing on a platform stage in the distance, celebrating their journey through the dark.

And Emma felt gratitude once more, a feeling she couldn’t handle when she was in the thick of her own darkness. There were people out there, some in the crowd around her, that were still living in it, but she had managed to find a path to follow, one that would eventually lead her out. And this crowd she was laughing and singing and marching with, she just wanted to reach out and help them all be with her on that path, or better than her because she knew she still had some ways to go even with the balloon arch so close.

“Almost there, love,” cheered Killian amongst the hollering crowd, all excited to see the sun.

And Emma felt gratitude again that he was here, warming her hand in that cold morning and comforting her just as he had always tried to do. The two of them had come a long way—from revealing themselves slowly, bit by bit then more and more with each night spent together, each message from class, every task assigned at their meetings, and every little moment in between. He was always there for her, and she had been there for him when he had to confront his past again with his father’s passing.

She could believe that they were simply meant to be this close, but mostly she was proud of the fact that they had fought so hard and long to stay connected with each other. They knew each other, the most intimate and darkest parts of themselves, but also the lighter, hopeful facets, too.

Even with his scars, his past, his current struggles, Killian was strong and determined to help other people like he’d been helped. He was the best person she knew, and when they crossed the line, walked under the pillar of balloons arching over their heads, she stopped.

“You alright, love? Why did we stop?”

“I’m just wondering if you could handle it,” she laughed to herself, shaking her doubts away and finally seeing things clearly.

“Handle what?” he asked, charming confusion adorning his face.

She turned to him then grabbed the open collar of his jacket and urgently pulled him closer until their lips met. It was better than she’d wished for all those nights in the hospital.

She expected him to freeze, to have to take a moment to snap out of shock, but as if he’d imagined it a thousand times, he instantly leaned in and cupped her face, threading his fingers through her hair and returned every ounce of emotion she poured into their kiss and maybe even then some.

She didn’t want to break the way his lips moved against hers, she didn’t want to break away from the softness of them and their warmth in the morning chill, but a howling began behind the finish line and they pulled away just enough to see the whole gang grinning like wolves—Dorothy then leading them into an obnoxious display of clapping.

“Stop that! Don’t ruin the moment,” frowned Mary Margaret disapprovingly, patting Ruby and Dorothy’s hands down and away.

“Too late!” Emma called over her shoulder, watching the beautiful way Killian smiled only at her.

“I think I handled that quite well,” he said cheekily.

“Mmm… You did _alright_.”

“You mean to wound me, but I only see that as a challenge, darling.”

“Good. Better shape up and practice,” she smirked.

She grabbed his hand again and they walked further away from the darkness in the west and toward the limitless light in front of them.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well now.
> 
> BOOM. IT HAPPENED.
> 
> Question, have you guys heard of the big ' Out of the Darkness' marches? We had one in San Francisco a while back, but I haven't heard of any since then :( Anywho, comments are loved and make my days brighter, but just seeing the views brings me joy, too.
> 
> Have a good day! *hugs*

**Author's Note:**

> Take care of yourselves, know your boundaries, visit that crisis resources post linked on the first chapter, and:
> 
> Remember, you really aren't alone, darlings. A lot of us are either in, have been in, or keep finding themselves back in that place that hurts–and remember what all these stories are all about: Having hope and staying strong.
> 
> You DESERVE to be happy. It's your RIGHT to not feel that way anymore and there are people out there who will do their damnedest and make it their job to help make it go away. You just have to find the one that works best for you. Keep on strong and going, lovelies.


End file.
